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V
THE
LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
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THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM. By
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X-
THE
LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
ESSAYS AND DIALOGUES
HENRY S. SALT
author op
'animals' rights, considbrbd in relation to social progress "
SECOND EDITION^ REVISED
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET
1906
V.
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THE MORALIST AT THE SHAMBLES.
Where slaughter 'd beasts lie (quivering, pile on pile,
And bare-armed fleshers, bathed iri bloody dew,
Ply hard their ghastly trade, and hack and hew.
And mock sweet Mercy's name, yet loathe the while
The lot that chains them to this service vile.
Their hands in hideous carnage to imbrue :
Lo, there ! — the preacher of the Good and True,
The Moral Man, with sanctimonious smile I
•• Thrice happy beasts," he murmurs, •• 'tis our love,
Our thoughtful love that sends ye to the knife
(Nay, doubt not, as ye welter in your gore !) ;
For thus alone ye earned the boon of life,
And thus alone the Moralist may prove
His sympathetic soul — by eating more* ' ' -
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PREFACE
In preparing this " Logic of Vegetarianism " for a new
edition, I have carefully re-read a sheaf of press opinions
which greeted the first appearance of the book some
seven years ago, with the hope of profiting by any
adverse criticism which might point out arguments that
I had overlooked. In this, however, I have been
disappointed, for, apart from a few such objections as
that raised in all seriousness by the Spectator — ^that I had
not done justice to the great problem of what would
become of the Esquimaux — ^the only definite complaint
which I can find is that the representatives of flesh-
eating whom I have introduced in the dialogues are
deliberately made to talk nonsense. " It is easy," said
one critic, " to confute an opponent if you have the selec-
tion of the arguments and the framing of the replies."
I ought not, perhaps, to have expected that the
assurance given in my introductory chapter (p. 2) as to
the authenticity of the anti- vegetarian pleadings would
shield me from this charge; indeed, the Vegetarian
Messenger^ in a friendly review of the book, expressed
doubt as to the policy of using dialogue at all, because, as
it remarked, ''the arguments against vegetarianism are
often so silly that it looks as if the author had set up a
man of straw in order to demolish him." Yet, as the
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vi PREFACE
Messenger itself added, " there is not ^n argument against
vegetarianism quoted in this volume which we have not,
time after time, seen seriously brought forward by our
opponents." Surely it would be a strange thing if food
reformers had to avoid any terse presentment of their
adversaries' reasoning for the very fact of its imbecility !
And there is this further question. If I have failed
to include in my selection the effective arguments against
vegetarianism, where and what are they? Looking
through those cited in the press notices, I can discover
none that seem to be formidable ; but rather than again
be suspected of unfair suppression, let me frankly quote
the following specimens of the beef -eater's philosophy :
" The proof that man should eat meat is that he always has
done so, does now, and always will. "
And again :
"Nobody will want to make out that he [the advocate oi
vegetarianism] is wrong, but folk will just go on suiting them-
selves as before. Shelley and Thoreau, Wagner and Edward
FitzGerald, were vegetarians, but, then, Wellington and Glad-
stone partook of the roast beef of Old England, and were none
the worse."
There is a sublime simplicity about these statements
which is most impressive, but I cannot think that any
wrong is done to the case against vegetarianism by not
including them in a discussion which purports to be a
logical one.
H. S. S.
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CONTENTS
Prbfacb - - - - -
Introductory . - - - .
Why " Vegetarian '•? -
The Raison D*&rxs of Vegetarianism
The Past and Present of Vegetarianism
Structural Evidence -
The Appeal to Nature
The Humanitarian Argument
Palliations and Sophistries •
The Consistency Trick
The Degradation of the Butcher
The Esthetic Argument
The Hygienic Argument
Digestion
Conditions of Climate
Flesh Meat and Morals
The Economic Argument
Doubts and Difficulties
Bible and Beef - - .
The Flesh-eater's Kith and Kin
Vegetarianism as Related to Other Reforms
Conclusion
Index - . - -
PAGB
V
4
9
13
18
24
29
35
41
47
*5i
57
62
67
71
77
83
89
- 95
- lOI
• 109
- "5
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THE
LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
INTRODUCTORY
It is the special purpose of this book to set forth in a
clear and rational manner the logic of vegetarianism.
To the ethical, the scientific, and the economic aspects of
the system much attention has already been given by
well-accredited writers, but there has not as yet been
any organised eflfort to present the logical view — that is,
the dialectical scope of the arguments, offensive and
defensive, on which the case for vegetarianism is founded.
I am aware that mere logic is not in itself a matter of
first-rate importance, and that a great humane principal,
based on true natural instinct, will in the long-run have
fulfilment, whatever wordy battles may rage around it
for a time; nevertheless, there is no better method of
hastening that result than to set the issues before the
public in a plain and unmistakable light. I wish, there-
fore, in this work, to show what vegetarianism is, and (a
scarcely less essential point) what vegetarianism is not.
For though, owing to the propaganda carried on for
the last fifty years, there has been an increasing talk of
vegetarianism, and a considerable discussion of its
doctrines, there are still very numerous misunderstand-
ings of its real aims and meaning. In this, as in other
phases of the great progressive movement of which
vegetarianism is a part, to give expression to a new idea
is to excite a host of blind and angry prejudices. The
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2 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
champions of the old are too disdainful to take counsel
with the champions of the new ; hence they commonly
attribute to them designs quite different from those which
they really entertain, and unconsciously set up a straw
man for the pleasure of pummelling him with criticism.
Devoid always of a sense of sympathy, and mostly of a
sense of humour, they absurdly exaggerate the least vital
points in their adversaries' reasoning, while they often
fail to note what is the very core of the controversy. It
is therefore of great concern to vegetarianism that its
case should be so stated as to preclude all possibility of
doubt as to the real issues involved. If agreement is
beyond our reach, let us at least ascertain the precise
point of our disagreement.
With a view to this result, it will be convenient to
have recourse now and then to the form of dialogue, so
as to bring into sharper contrast the pros and cons of the
argument. Nor will these conversations be altogether
imaginary, for, to avoid any suspicion of burlesquing
the counter-case of our opponents by a fanciful present-
ment, I shall introduce only such objections to vege-
tarianism as have actually been insisted on — the stock-
objections, in fact, which crop up again and again in all
colloquies on food reform — with sometimes the very
words of the flesh-eating disputant. It is not my fault
if some of these objections appear to be foolish. I have
often marvelled at the reckless way in which those who
would combat new and unfamiliar notions step forth to
the encounter, unprovided with intellectual safeguards,
and trusting wholly to certain ancient generic fallacies,
which, if we may judge from their appearance in all
ages and climates, are indigenous in the human mind.
Many of the difficulties which the flesh-eater to-day
propounds to the vegetarian are the same, mutatis
mutandiSf as those which have at various times been
cast in the teeth of the reformer by the apologists of
every cruel and iniquitous custom, from slave-holding to
the suttee.
To show the unreality of these sophisms, by clearing
away the misconceptions upon which they rest, and to
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INTRODUCTORY 3
state the creed of vegetarianism as preached and practised
by its friends rather than as misapprehended by its foes —
such is the object of this work. To make " conversions,"
in the ordinary sense, is not my concern. What we have
to do is to discover who are flesh-eaters by ingrained
conviction, and who by thoughtlessness and ignorance,
and to bring over to our side from the latter class those
who are naturally allied to us, though by accident ranged
in opposition. And this, once more, can only be done by
making the issues immistakable.
Incidentally, I hope these pages may suggest to our
antagonists that vegetarians, perhaps, are not the weak
brainless sentimentalists that they are so often depicted.
It is, to say the least of it, entertaining when a critic
who has just been inquiring (for example) " what would
become of the animals *' if mankind were to desist from
eating them, goes on to remark of vegetarians that
"their hearts are better than their heads." Alas, we
cannot truthfully return the compliment by saying of
such a philospher that his head is better than his heart !
It cannot be too strongly stated that the appeal of vege-
tarianism, as of all humane systems, is not to heart alone,
nor to brain alone, but to brain and heart combined, and
that if its claims fail to win this double judgment they
are necessarily void and invalid. The test of logic, no
less than the test of feeling, is deliberately challenged by
us ; for it is only by those who can think as well as feel,
and feel as well as think, that the diet question, or indeed
any great social question, can ever be brought to its
solution.
I — 2
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WHY "VEGETARIAN''?
The term "vegetarian," as applied to those who abstain
from all flesh food, but not necessarily from such animal
products as eggs, milk, and cheese, appears to have come
into existence over fifty years ago, at the time of the
founding of the Vegetarian Society in 1847. Until that
date no special name had been appropriated for the
reformed diet system, which was usually known as the
" Pythagorean '' or ** vegetable diet," as may be seen by
a reference to the writings of that period. Presumably,
it was felt that when the movement grew in volume, and
was about to enter on a new phase, with an organised
propaganda, it was advisable to coin for it an original
and distinctive title. Whether, from this point of view,
the name "vegetarian" was wisely or unwisely chosen
is a question on which there has been some difference
of opinion among food reformers themselves, and it is
possible that adverse criticism would have been still
more strongly expressed but for the fact that no better
title has been forthcoming.
On the whole, the name " vegetarian " seems to be
fairly serviceable, its disadvantage being that it gives
occasion for sophistry on the part of captious opponents.
In all controversies such as that of which vegetarianism
is the subject there are verbalists who cannot see beyond
the outer shell of a word to the thing which the word
signifies, and who delight to chop logic and raise small
obstacles, as thus :
Verbalist : Why " vegetarian " ?
Vegetarian : Why not " vegetarian " ?
Verbalist : How can it be consistent with vegetarianism
to consume, as you admit you do, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs,
all of which are choice foods from the animal kingdom ?
4
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WHY " VEGETARIAN " ? 5
Vegetarian : That entirely depends on what is meant by
" vegetarianism."
Verbalist ; Well, surely its meaning is obvious — a diet of
vegetables only, with no particle of animal substance.
Vegetarian : As a matter of fact, such is not, and has never
been, its accepted meaning. The question was often debated
in the early years of the Vegetarian Society, and it was always
held that the use of eggs and milk was not prohibited. " To
induce habits of abstinence from the flesh of animals (fish,
flesh, fowl) as food '' was the avowed aim of vegetarianism, as
officially stated on the title-page of its journal.
Verbalist : But the word " vegetarian" — what other meaning
can it have than that which I have attributed to it ?
Vegetarian : Presumably those who invented the word
were the best judges of its meaning, and what they meant by it
is proved beyond a doubt by the usage of the Society.
Verbalist: But had they a right thus to twist the word
from its natural derivation ?
Vegetarian : If you appeal to etymology, that raises
another question altogether, and here, too, you will find the
authorities against you. No one has a better right to speak on
this matter than Professor J. E. B. Mayor, the great Latin
scholar, and he states that, looking at the word etymologically,
"vegetarian" cannot mean "an eater of vegetables." It is
derived from vegetus, "vigorous," and means, strictly inter-
preted, "one who aims at vigour." Mind, I am not saying
that the originators of the term " vegetarian " had this meaning
in view, but merely that the etymological sense of the word does
not favour your contention any more than the historical.
Verbalist: Well, what does "vegetarian" mean, then?
How do you explain it yourself ?
Vegetarian : A " vegetarian " is one who abstains from
eating the flesh of animals, and whose food is mainly derived
from the vegetable kingdom.
The above dialogue will show the absurdity and in-
justice of charging vegetarians, as the late Sir Henry
Thompson did, with <* equivocal terms, evasion — in short,
untruthfulness," because they retain a title which was
originally invented for their case. The statement that
vegetarians have changed the meaning of their name,
owing to inability to'find adequate nourishment on a
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6 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
purely vegetable diet, is founded on similar ignorance of
the facts. Here are two specimens of Sir Henry Thomp-
son's inaccuracy. In 1885 he wrote:
"It is high time that we should be spared the obscure
language, or rather the inaccurate statement, to which milk and
egg consumers are committed, in assuming a title which has
for centuries belonged to that not inconsiderable body of
persons whose habits of life confer the right to use it."*
Observe that Sir Henry Thompson was then under
the impression that the name " vegetarian " (invented in
1847) was " centuries " old ! Nor, names apart, was he
any more accurate as regards the practice itself, for it
can be proved on the authority of a long succession of
writers, from the time of Ovid to the time of Shelley,
that the use of milk and its products has been from the
first regarded as compatible with the Pythagorean or
" vegetable " diet. ' The fact that some individual
abstainers from flesh have also abstained from all animal
substances is no justification of the attempt to impose
such stricter abstinence on all vegetarians on peril of
being deprived of their name.
Thirteen years later Sir Henry Thompson's argument
was entirely changed. His assertion of the antiquity of
the name " vegetarian '* was quietly dropped ; in fact, its
novelty was now rather insisted on.
"They [the "vegetarians"] emphatically state that they no
longer rely for their diet on the produce of the vegetable king-
dom, differing from those who originally adopted the name at a
date by no means remote." f
But our critic was again absolutely mistaken. There
is no difference whatever between the diet of those who
adopted the name at the date by no means remote and
that of those who bear it now. Now, as then, there are
some few vegetarians who abjure all that is of the
animal, but the rule of the Society now, as then, is that
the use of eggs and milk is permissible. At the third
annual meeting, held in 1850, it was stated by one of
* Nineteenth Century^ May, 1885. f ^^i^^y Ju»e, 1898.
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WHY « VEGETARIAN " ? 7
the speakers that "the limits within which the dietary of
the Vegetarian Society was restricted excluded nothing
but the flesh and blood of animals."
To avoid any possible misunderstanding, let me repeat
that it is no part of the case for vegetarianism to defend
the name " vegetarian " in itself ; it may be a good name
or a bad one. What we defend is our right to the title,
an indefeasible historical claim which is not to be upset
by any such unfounded and self-contradictory assertions
as those quoted.
But it may be said that even if the title is historically
genuine, it would be better to change it, as it evidently
leads to misunderstanding. We should be perfectly
willing to do this, but for two difficulties : first, that no
other satisfactory title has ever been suggested, and
secondly that, as the word " vegetarian " has now a
recognised place in the language, it would' scarcely be
possible to get rid of it ; at any rate, the substitute, to
have the least chance of success, would have to be very
terse, popular, and expressive. Take, for example, the
name " flesh-abstainer," or " akreophagist," proposed by
Sir Henry Thompson. The obvious objection to such
terms is that they are merely negative, and give the notion
that we are abstinents and nothing more. We do not at
all object to the use of the term " flesh abstainer " as
explanatory of " vegetarian," but we do object to it as a
substitute, for as such it would give undue prominence to
our disuse of flesh food, which, after all, is merely one
particular result of a general habit of mind. Let us state
it in this way : Our view of life is such that flesh-eating
is abhorrent and impossible to us ; but the mere fact
that this abstinence attracts the special attention of flesh-
eaters, and becomes the immediate subject of controversy,
does not make it the sum and substance of our creed.
We hold that in a rational and humanised society there
could be no question at all about such a practice as
flesh-eating; the very idea of it would be insufferable.
Therefore we object to be labelled with a negative term
which only marks our divergence from other persons'
diet ; we prefer something that is positive and indicative
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8 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
of our own. And untU we find somer more appropriate
title, we intend to make the best of what we have got.
The whole " Why * vegetarian ' ?" argument is, in fact,
a disingenuous one. The practical issue between
" vegetarians '* and flesh-eaters has always been perfectly
clear to those who wished to understand it, and the
attempt made by the verbalists to distract attention from
the thing in order to fasten it on the name is nothing but
sophistical. Of this main practical issue, and of the
further distinction between the ** vegetarian " or flesh-
abstaining diet and the purely vegetable diet, I will speak
in the following chapter.
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THE RAISON D'ETRE OF VEGETARIANISM
Behind the mere name of the reformed diet, whatever
name be employed (and, as we have seen, " vegetarian *'
at present holds the field), lies the far more important
reality. What is the mison d'itre, the real purport of
vegetarianism ? Certainly not any a priori assumption
that all animal substances, as such, are unfit for human
food ; for though it is quite probable that the movement
will ultimately lead us to the disuse of animal products,
vegetarianism is not primarily based on any such hard-
and-fast formula, but on the conviction, suggested in the
first place by instinctive feeling, but confirmed by reason
and experience, that there are certain grave evils in-
separable from the practice of flesh-eating. The aversion
to flesh food is not chemical, but moral, social, hygienic.
Believing as we do that the grosser forms of diet not
only cause a vast amount of unnecessary suffering to the
animals, but also react most injuriously on the health
and morals of mankind, we advocate their gradual dis-
continuance ; and so long as this protest is successfully
launched, the mere name by which it is called is a matter
of minor concern. But here on this practical issue, as
before on the nominal issue, we come into conflict with
the superior person who, with a smile of supercilious
compassion, cannot see why we poor ascetics should thus
afilict ourselves without cause.
Superior Person : But why, my dear sir — why should you
refuse a slice of roast beef ? What is the difference between
roasting an pXjand boiiing an egg ? In the latter case you are
eating an animal in embryo — ^that is all.
Vegetarian : Do you not draw any distinction between the
lower and the higher organisation ?
Superior Person: None whatever. They are chemically
identical in substance.
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lo THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Vegetarian : Possibly ; but we were talking, not of chemistry,
but of morals, and an egg is certainly not morally identical widi
an ox.
Superior Person : How or where does the moral phase of
food-taking enter the science of dietetics ?
Vegetarian : At a good many points, I think. One of them
is the question of cannibalism. Allow me to read you a passage
from the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" : *'Man being by nature [?]
carnivorous as well as frugivorous, and human flesh being not
unfit for hmnan food, the question arises why mankind generally
have not only avoided it, but have looked with horror on
exceptional individuals and races addicted to cannibalism. It
is evident on consideration that both emotional and religious
motives must have contributed to bring about this prevailing
state of mind."
Superior Person : Of course. Why read me all that ?
Vegetarian : To show you that what you call " the moral
phase of food-taking " has undoubtedly affected our diet. The
very thought of eating human flesh is revolting to you. Yet
human flesh is chemically identical with anim^ flesh, and if it be
true that to boil an egg is the same thing as to roast an ox, it
follows that to butcher an ox is the same thing as to murder a
man. Such is the logical position in which you have placed
yourself by ignoring the fact that all life is not equally valuable,
but that the higher the life the greater the responsibility
incurred by those who destroy it.
Or it may be that the superior person, instead of deny-
ing that morals affect dietetics, himself poses as so austere
a moralist as to scorn the wretched half-measure of merely
abstaining from flesh food while still using animal pro-
ducts. The result is in either case the same. The all-
or-nothing argument is sometimes put forward in this
fashion :
Superior Person : Well, as far as the right or wrong of
the question is concerned, I would not care to be a vegetarian
at all, unless I were a thorough one. What can be the good of
forswearing animal food in one form if you take it in another ?
Vegetarian : But surely it is rational to deal with the worst
abuses first. To insist on an all-or-nothing policy would be fatal
to any reform whatsoever. Improvements never come in the
mass, but always by instalment ; and it is only reactionists who
deny that half a loaf is better than no bread.
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RAISON D'ETRE OF VEGETARIANISM ii
Superior Person : But in this case I understand that it is
quite possible to be consistent. There are individuals, are there
not, who live upon a purely vegetable diet, without using milk
or eggs ? Now, those are the people whose action one can at
least appreciate and respect.
Vegetarian : Quite so. We fully admit that they are in
advance of their fellows. We regard them as pioneers, who are
now anticipating a future phase of our movement.
Superior Person: You admit, then, that this extreme
vegetarianism is the more ideal diet ?
Vegetarian : Yes. To do more than you have undertaken
to do is a mark of signal merit ; but no discredit attaches on
that account to those who have done what they undertook. We
hold that "the first step," as Tolstoy has expressed it, is to
clear oneself of all complicity in the horrible business of the
islaughterhouse.
Superior Person : Well, I must repeat that, were I to
practise any form of asceticism, I should incline to that which
does not do things by halves.
Vegetarian : Of course. That is invariably the sentiment
of those who do not do things at all.
Asceticism ! such is the strange idea with which, in
many minds, our principles are associated. It would be
impossible to take a more erroneous view of modern
vegetarianism; and it is only through constitutional or
deliberate blindness to the meaning of the movement that
such a misconception can arise. How can we convey to
our flesh-eating friends, in polite yet sufficiently forcible
language, that their diet is an abomination to us, and that
our " abstinence,'* far from being ascetic, is much more
nearly allied to the joy that never palls ? Is the farmer
an ascetic because, looking over into his evil-smelling
pigsty, he has no inclination to swill himself from the
same trough as the swine ? And why, then, should it be
counted asceticism on our part to refuse, on precisely the
same grounds, to eat the swine themselves ? No ; our
opponents must clearly recognise, if they wish to form
any correct notion of vegetarianism, that it is based, not
on asceticism, but aestheticism ; not on the mortification,
but the gratification of the higher pleasures.
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12 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
We conclude, then, that the cause which vegetarians
have at heart is the outcome, not of some barren academic
formula, but of a practical reasoned conviction that flesh
food, especially butchers* meat, is a harmful and bar-
barous diet. Into the details of this belief we need not at
present enter; it has been sufficient here to show that
such belief exists, and that the good people who can see
in vegetarianism nothing but a whimsical " fad " have
altogether failed to grasp its true purport and significance.
' iFhe raison d'Ute of vegetarianism is the growing sense
that flesh-eating is a cruel, disgusting, unwholesome, and
wasteful practice, and that it behoves humane and
rational persons, disregarding the common cant about
" consistenc)^.'' and " all or nothing," to reform their diet
to what extent and with what speed they can.
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THE PAST AND PRESENT OF
VEGETARIANISM
But, it may be said, before entering on a consideration
of this reformed diet, for which such great merits are
claimed by its exponents, the practical man is justified in
asking for certain solid assurances, since busy people
cannot be expected to give their time to speculations
which, however beautiful in themselves, may prove at
the end to be in conflict with the hard facts of life. And
the first of these questions is, What is the historic basis
of vegetarianism ? In what sense is "it an old movement,
and in what sense a new one? Has it a past which
may serve in some measure to explain its present and
guarantee its future ?
Such questions have been dealt with fully from time
to^ time in vegetarian literature.* I can here do no more
than epitomise the answers. Vegetarianism, regarded
simply as a practice and without relation to any principle,
is of immemorial date; it was, in fact, as physiology
shows us, the original diet of mankind, while, as history
shows us, it has always been the diet of the many, as
flesh food has been the diet of the few, and even to this
day it is the main support of the greater part of the
world's inhabitants. Numberless instances might be
quoted in proof of these assertions; it is sufficient to
refer to the people of India, China, and Japan, the
Egyptian fellah, the Bedouin Arab, the peasantry of
Russia and Turkey, the labourers and miners of Chili
and other South American States ; and, to come nearer
home, the great bulk of the country folk in Western
Europe and Great Britain. The peasant, here and all
♦ As in "The Perfect Way in Diet," by Dr. Anna Kingsfordi
and " Strength and Diet," by the Hon. R. Russell.
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14 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
the world over, has been, and still is, in the main a
vegetarian, and must for the most part continue so ; and
the fact that this diet has been the result, not of choice,
but of necessity, does not lessen the significance of its
perfect sufficiency to maintain those who do the hard
work of the world. Side by side with the tendency of
the wealthier classes to indulge more and more in nesh
food has been the undisputed admission that for the
workers such luxuries were unneeded.
During the last half-century, however, as we all know,
the unhealthy and crowded civilisation of great industrial
centres has produced among the urban populations of
Europe a craving for flesh food, which has resulted in
their being fed largely on cheap butchers' meat and ofFal ; '
while there has grown up a corresponding belief that we
must look almost entirely to a flesh diet for bodily and
mental vigour. It is in protest against this comparatively
new demand for flesh as a necessity of life that vege-
tarianism, as a modern organised movement, has arisen.
Secondly, if we look back for examples of deliberate
abstinence from flesh — that is, of vegetarianism practised
as a principle before it was denoted by a name — we find
no lack of them in the history of religious and moral
systems and individual lives. Such abstinence was an
essential feature in the teaching of Buddha and Pythagoras
and is still practised in the East on religious and cere-
monial grounds by Brahmins and Buddhists. It was
inculcated in the humanitarian writings of great "pagan"
philosophers, such as Plutarch and Porphyry, whose
ethical precepts, as far as the treatment of the lower
animals is concerned, are still far in advance of modem
Christian sentiment. Again, in the prescribed regimen of
certain religious Orders, such as Benedictines, Trappists,
and Carthusians, we have further unquestionable evidence
of the disuse of flesh food, though in such cases the reason
for the abstinence is ascetic rather than humane. When
we turn to the biographies of individuals, we learn that
there have been numerous examples of what is now
called <* vegetarianism'' — not always consistent, indeed, or
continuous in practice, yet sufficiently so to prove the
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PAST AND PRESENT 15
entire possibility of the diet, and to remove it from the
category of generous aspiration into that of accomplished
fact*
But granting that there is historic basis for the vege-
tarian system, the question is asked whether, on ethno-
logical evidence, it does not appear that the dominant
races have been for the most part carnivorous, and the
subject races vegetarian — a line of argument which
always appeals strongly to the patriotic Briton.
Patriot : Come, now ; it is all very well to talk of philosophers
and poets, and I have no doubt you can point to such names
among the founders of your creed, but what I ask is, Were the
founders of the British Empire vegetarians ? Were any great
empires ever founded by vegetarians? Was Julius Caesar a
vegetarian ? Was Wellington a vegetarian ? Can you give me
any instance of vegetarianism as a fighting force ?
Vegetarian : As regards the rank and file of conquering
armies, there are many such instances, both in ancient and
modem history. The diet of the Roman soldier was not that
of a flesh-eater, and the Roman Empire was assuredly not won
by virtue of flesh-eating, but by the haidihood which could
subsist on simple rations of wheat, oil, and wine. So, too, the
armies which built up the earlier empires of Egypt and Assyria
were, for the most part, vegetarian. That is to say, while the
rulers and wealthy classes of fighting nations have been
carnivorous, the bulk of the soldiery, drawn from the frugal
peasant class, has been unaccustomed to such luxuries. The
idea that the flesh-eating races have everywhere subjugated the
vegetarians is quite illusory.
Patriot : But surely in India the flesh-eating Mohammedan
has always conquered the vegetarian Hindu?
Vegetarian : Not by any means always. It took him
centuries of fierce fighting to do so, with all the advantages of
religious fanaticism on his side, as against an enemy weakened
by internal dissension and an enervating climate. But that
Mohammedanism does not depend on flesh food for its fighting
qualities may be seen from the case of that special ally and
favourite of yours, the Turk. Let me read you what the
* See the. list of names cited in Mr. Howard Williams's
** Ethics of Diet," a biographical history of the literature of
humane dietetics from the earliest period to the present day.
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i6 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Standard said of him some twenty years back : '* From the
day of his irruption into Europe, the Turk has always proved
himself to be endowed with singularly strong vitality and
energy. As a member of a warlike race, he is without equal in
Europe in health and hardiness. He can live and fight when
soldiers of any other nationality would starve. His excellent
physique, his simple habits, his abstinence from intoxicating
liquors, and his normal vegetarian diet, enable him to support
the greatest hardships, and to subsist on the scantiest and
simplest food." Have I said enough to show you that vege-
tarianism may be a fighting force ?
It will be objected, perhaps, that when food reformers
claim these fighting qualities for their diet they are
proving just a little too much for their principles, as, for
example, in the reference to the sanguinary Turk as a
practical vegetarian. If the outcome of vegetarian diet
is to be war and massacre, how is the system any better
than that which it fain would supersede ? This brings
us back to the starting-point of the present chapter, the
distinction between what may be called the old and the
new vegetarianism. We have seen that, so far as the
common practice is concerned, abstinence from flesh food
is as old as history itself, and that rarer instances may
be cited of practice and principle combined ; but when
we regard vegetarianism as a propagandist movement, a
conscious endeavour to benefit not merely the individual
man, but human society itself, we have to recognise that
it is a new movement. From a mere habit of the many,
or piety of the few, it has become a reasoned principle, an
organised system, with a name and nomenclature of its
own : in vulgar language, it is an -«w, and, like other
kindred -ismSi a part of the great humanitarian impulse
of the past hundred years.
The significance of this distinction is considerable.
Modem *< vegetarianism '' is the same, yet not the same,
as the << flesh abstinence '* that dates from earlier times
— ^the same in so far as the actual dietary is concerned,
and in some fewer cases the same in. principle, but
different altogether in the spirit by which that principle
is informed ; and for this reason it would be ridiculous
to judge vegetarianism as a whole by the character of
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PAST AND PRESENT 17
those races who happen to have been abstainers from
flesh, and who are merely quoted as proving the physical
sufficiency of the diet. In a word, ethnical vegetarianism
and ethical vegetarianism are two very different things.
It has also to be remembered that the modem vege-
tarian appeals not to humane instinct only, but to
physiological facts, and that the movement has now
become to a very large extent a scientific and hygienic
one, thus again differing widely from the merely empirical
and unconscious vegetarianism of earlier times. These
several aspects of the system will be reviewed in suc-
ceeding chapters; it is enough here to repeat that
vegetarianism as a practice is immemorial, as a precept
is of great antiquity, but as an organised cult is one of
the new revolutionary forces of modern times.
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STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE
We have seen, then, that vegetarianism, though new as
a propagandist doctrine, has its historical record ; but if
we wish thoroughly to understand its origin, we must go
back beyond history to the more ancient and more durable
evidence of the organic structure of Man. Here we come
in conflict with what is, perhaps, the strangest of the many
strange prejudices that oppose the humane diet — the super-
stition, so common among the uneducated, and connived
at, if not shared, by some of the " scientific ** themselves,
that the verdict of comparative anatomy is fatal to the
vegetarian claims. So far is this from being the case
that the great naturalists, from Linnaeus onward, give
implicit judgment to the contrary, by classing mankind
with the frugivorous family of the anthropoid apes. Thus
Sir Richard Owen says :
'* The apes and monkeys, which man most nearly resembles
in his dentition, derive their staple food from fruits, grain, the
kernels of nuts, and other forms in which the most sapid and
nutritious tissues of the vegetable kingdom are elaborated ; and
the close resemblance between the quadrumanous and the
human dentition shows that man was, from the beginning
more especially adapted * to eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden.' ***
* " Odontography," chap, x., p. 471, 1840- 1845. This sentence
is quoted only for what it is worth — ^viz., as proving that, in
Owen's opinion, man was originally frugivorous. If the whole
passage in " Odontography " be studied, it will be seen that
Owen cannot fairly be cited as a vegetarian authority, because,
after alluding to the fact that the apes occasionally eat insects,
eggs, and young birds, he sums up in favour of what he calls
' ' the frugivorous and mixed regimen of the quadrumana and
man." This point I have dealt with later in the chapter.
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STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE 19
And here is the more recent verdict of Sir Benjamin
Richaxdson :
'* On the whole, I am bound to give judgment on the evidence
of the teeth rather in favour of the vegetarian argument. It
seems fairest of fair to read from nature that the teeth of man
were destined — or fitted, if the word destined is objected to —
for a plant or vegetable diet, and that the modification due to
animal food, by which some change has been made, is practi-
cally an accident or necessity, which would soon be rectified if
the conditions were rendered favourable to a return to the ^
primitive state. ... By weighing the facts that now lie before r
us, the inference is justified that, in spite of "the very lon^ time r
during which man has been subjected to an animal diet, he
retains in preponderance his original and natural taste for an
innocent diet derived from the first-fruits of the earth.'* ♦
Yet, in spite of such testimony, and more of an equally
authoritative kind, it is quite a common thing for some
flesh-eating "scientist" to allege against vegetarianism
the conformation of the human teeth or stomach. c
Scientist : But our teeth, my good friend, our teeth ! What
can be the use of your talking about vegetarianism, when we
both of us carry in our mouths a proof of the necessity of fiesh-
eating. '
Vegetarian : But surely you do not hold the popular fallacy
that man's canine teeth class him among the camivora ?
Scientist : They prove at least that he is an eater of fiesh as
well as of vegetables. Why else has he got such teeth ?
Vegetarian : Why has a gorilla got such teeth ? " For the
purpose of combat and defence,'' Owen tells us, not of food. And
if a gorilla, with " canines " much more developed than man's,
is a frugivorous animal, why must man with less developed
" canines *' be carnivorous ?
Scientist : Well, well ; let us turn to the digestive organs,
then. Look at the immense difference between the human
stomach and that of the true herbivora. How can mankind
get the required nutriment from herbs, when we have not the
necessary apparatus for doing so?
Vegetarian : But it has never been argued by us, nor is it
* " Foods for Man," Longman^ s Magazine^ 188S.
2 — 2
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20 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
in any way essential to our argument, that mankind is
herbivorous. What have the herbivora to do with the question ?
Scientist : I have seen them quoted in your books as
instances of strength and endurance
Vegetarian : To dispel the illusion that there is no chemical
nutriment in anything but flesh food ; but that is quite a different
thing from asserting that man is himself herbivorous. The point
at issue is simple. You charge vegetarians with flying in the
face of Nature. We show you, from your own authorities, that
the structural evidence, whatever that may be worth (it was you
who first appealed to it), pronounces man to have been originally
neither carnivorous, nor herbivorous, but frugivorous. If you
think otherwise, what do you make of the apes ?
The close similarity that exists between the structure
of man and that of the anthropoid apes is the hard fact that
cannot be evaded by the apologists of flesh-eating. In the
conformation alike of brain, of hands, of teeth, of salivary
glands, of stomach, we have indisputable proof of the
frugivorous origin of man — indeed, it is not seriously
questioned by any recognised authority, that man was a
fruit-eater in the early stages of his development. As
far as comparative anatomy throws light on the diet ques-
tion, mankind and the apes are, so to speak, <* in the same
box," and he who would disprove the frugivorous nature
of man, must also disprove the frugivorous nature of the
anthropoid apes, a predicament of which the more intelli-
gent of our opponents are keenly aware. And this brings
us to the second branch of the subject of this chapter.
Whatever his original structure, it is argued, man has
extended his resources in the matter of food, and has
long been "omnivorous,*' while bis middle position
between the carnivora and herbivora indicates that he is
naturally suited for a "mixed diet." Omnivorous, it will
be noted, is the blessed word that is to bring comfort
to flesh-eaters, and the inconvenient apes, whom the
naturalists class as frugivorous, have somehow to be
dragged in under the category of " omnivorous." But,
flrst, a word about the meaning of this saving term.
Now, I wish to make it plain that vegetarians are not
wedded to any a priori theory that the lines of dietetic
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STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE 21
development are stringently limited by the original
structure of man. If the flesh-eater appeals, as he so
often does, to physical structure, with the intent of
attributing carnivorous instincts to mankind, we confront
him with an array of scientific opinion which quickly
makes him wish he had let the subject alone ; and if he
insists on the " evolutional " rather than the " natural "
aspect of the problem, we are equally ready to meet him
on this newer ground. But we decline to fall victims to
the rather disingenuous quibble that lurks in the specious
application to mankind of the term " omnivorous."
For what, in the present connection, does the word
" omnivorous " mean ? It cannot, obviously, mean that
man should, like the hog, eat everything^ for, if so, it would
sanction not only flesh-eating, but cannibalism, and we
should have to class mankind (so Professor Mayor has
wittily remarked) as hominivorous I It must mean, presum-
ably, that man is fitted to eat not everything^ but anything
— vegetable food or animal food — implying that he is
eclectic in his diet, free to choose what is good and reject
what is bad, without being bound by any original law of
nature.* To the name "omnivorous," used not in the
hoggish sense, but in this rational sense, and not exclud-
ing, as the scientists would absurdly make it exclude, the
force of moral and other considerations, the vegetarian
need raise no objection. Man is " omnivorous," is he ?
He may select his own diet from the vegetable and
animal kingdoms ?" Well and good : that is just what
we have always advised him to do, and we are prepared
to give reasons, moral and hygienic, why, in making the
selection, he should omit the use, not of all animal
products, but of flesh. The scientists cannot have it
both ways. They cannot dogmatise on diet as a thing
* It has been well shown by Dr. J. Oldfield, in the New
Century Review^ October 1898, that "omnivorism" in the hoggish
sense, is not characteristic of progressive mankind. ** The
higher we go in the scale of life, the more we find selection
taking the place of omnivorism. The more complex the
organism, the greater its selective capacity. * Selection,' then,
rather than 'omnivorism,* should be the watch-cry of the
human race evolving upward."
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22 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
settled by comparative anatomy, and also assert that man
is " omnivorous " — ».^., free to choose what is best.
But let us return to our monkeys.
Scientist : You just now quoted the gorilla as a frugivorous
animal, but, on further consideration, I cannot admit him to be
so. He is omnivorous — like man. I have Sir Richard Owen's
authority for it.
Vegetarian : What ! Does the ape rush upon the antelopes,
and rend them with those canine teeth of his ? How horrible !
Scientist : Not exactly that ; but it was stated by Sir Henry
Thompson that " Sally," the large chimpaneze once so popular
in the Zoological Gardens, was not infrequently supplied with
animal food.
Vegetarian : Well, and how does that prove that the chim-
panzee is not naturally frugivorous ? I should imagine that any
one of us, if placed in a cage, and stared at all the year round
by a throng of gaping visitors, might be liable to aberrations.
Even a vegetarian might do the same.
Scientist : But in their wild state also the baboons are
known to prey on lizards, young birds, eggs, etc., when they
can get them. Perhaps you were not aware of this when you
called the apes frugivorous ?
Vegetarian : I was quite aware of it, and in view of the
exceedingly small importance of these casual pilferings as com-
pared with their staple diet, I maintain that they are^ for all
practical purposes, frugivorous. Indeed, so far from this
mischievous penchant of the apes being an argument against
vegetarianism, it is most suggestive as explaining how the early
savages may have passed, almost by accident at first, from a
frugivorous to a mixed diet.
Scientist : Well, at any rate, it indicates that apes have a
tendency to become omnivorous.
Vegetarian : Yes, if you like to express it so ; and it is still
more evident that men have that tendency. But the question is
whether the tendency is rightly interpreted as giving a sanction
\.Q flesh-eating. For flesh -eating, as we use the term, means the
breeding, destroying, and devouring of highly-organised niam-
mals, and is a very different thing from the ^%% and lizard
hunting in which the monkeys sometimes indulge. If you
would confine your flesh -eating to a few insects and nestlings,
you would have a better right to quote the example of the apes.
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STRUCTURAL EVIDENCE 23
Has flesh-eating been a necessary step in man's
progress ? Without access to the flesh-pots, it has been
asked, would not the race have remained in the groves
with the orangs and the gorillas? I do not see that
vegetarians need concern themselves to answer such
speculations, which, interesting though they are, do not
bear closely on the present issue. For though, as we
have seen, the testimony of the past is in favour of a
frugivorous origin, the problem of the present is one
which we are free to solve without prejudice, and
whether the past use of flesh food, by a portion of the
world's inhabitants, has helped or hindered the true
development of man is a matter for individual judgment.
We may have our own opinion about it. But what we
are concerned to prove is that flesh-eating can offer no
advantages to us now.
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THE APPEAL TO NATURE
Of the many dense prejudices through which, as through
a snowdrift, vegetarianism has to plough its way before
it can emerge into the field of free discussion, there is
none perhaps more inveterate than the common appeal
to " Nature." A typical instance of the remarkable
misuse of logic which characterises such argument may
be seen in the anecdote related by Benjamin Franklin, in
his " Autobiography," of the incident which induced him
to return, after years of abstinence, to a flesh diet. He
was watching some companions sea-fishing, and observing
that some of the fish caught by them had swallowed
other fish, he concluded that, "If you eat one another, I
don't see why we may not eat you " — a confusion of
ichthyology and morals which is ludicrous enough as
narrated by Franklin, but not essentially more foolish
than the attempt so frequently made by flesh-eaters to
shuffle their personal responsibility on to some supposed
" natural law."
But let the carnivorous anthropologist sp^ak for
himself :
Anthropologist : Now, understand me ! I think this vege-
tarianism is well enough as a sentiment ; I fully appreciate your
aspiration. But you have overlooked the fact that it is contrary
to the laws of Nature. It is beautiful in theory, but impossible
in practice.
Vegetarian : Indeed ! That puts me in an awkward posi-
tion, as I have been practising it for twenty years.
Anthropologist : It is not the individual that I am speak-
ing of, but the race. A man may practise it perhaps ; but
mankind cannot do so with impunity.
Vegetarian : And why ?
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THE APPEAL TO NATURE 25
Anthropologist : Because, as the poet says, " Nature is
one with rapine." It is natural to kill. Do you dare to impugn
Nature ?
Vegetarian : Not at all. What I dare to impugn is your
incorrect description of Nature. There is a great d^ more in
Nature than rapine and slaughter.
Anthropologist: What? Do not the beasts and birds
prey on one another ? Do not the big fish eat the little fish ?
Is it not all one universal struggle for existence, one internecine
strife?
Vegetarian : No ; that is just what it is not. There are two
principles at work in Nature — the law of competition and the
law of mutual aid. There are carnivorous animals and non-
carnivorous, predatory races and sociable races ; and the vital
(question is — to which does man belong? You obscure the
issue by these vague and meaningless appeals to the " laws of
Nature," when, in the first place, you are quoting only part of
Nature's ordinance, and, secondly, have not yourself the least
intention of conforming even to that part.
Anthropologist : I beg your pardon. In what do I not
conform to Nature ?
Vegetarian : Well, are you in favour of cannibalism, let us
say, or the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes?
Anthropologist ; Good gracious, my dear sir I I must
entreat you
Vegetarian ; Exactly ! You are horrified at the mere mention
of such things. Yet these habits are as easily justified as fiesh-
eating, if you take " Nature" as your model, without specifying
whose nature ? The nature of the conger and the dog-fish, or
the nature of civilised man? Pray tell me thaty Mr. Anthro-
pologist, and then our conversation may not be wholly
irrelevant
The idea that the Darwinian doctrine of the " struggle
of life " justifies any barbarous treatment of inferior races
is ridiculed by so distinguished an authority as Prince
Kropotkin, who points out that Darwin does not teach
this. " He proves that there is a struggle for existence
in order to put a check on the inordinate increase of
species. But this struggle is not to be understood in
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26 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
a crude and exclusive sense ; there is a law of competition,
but there is also — ^what is still more important — a law
of mutual aid, and as soon as the scientist leaves his
laboratory, and comes out into the open woods and
meadows, he sees the importance of this law. Only
those animals who are mutually helpful are really fitted
to survive ; it is not jthe strong, but the co-operative
species that endure.*** So, too, with reference to the
strange notion that a guide for human conduct may be
deduced from some particular animal instinct, taken at
haphazard from its surroundings, a timely warning is
addressed to such crude reasoners by Professor J. Arthur
Thomson : " What we must protest against is that one-
sided interpretation, according to which individualistic
competition is Nature's sole method of progress. . . .
The precise nature of the means employed and ends
attained must be carefully considered, when we seek
from the records of animal evolution support or justifica-
tion for human conduct.**!
It may be said, however, that though man is fitted to
co-operate peacefully with his fellows, he is not bound by
any such ties of brotherhood to the lower animals, and
that it is "natural" that he should prey on the non-
human races, even if it be not natural that he should
seek pleasure at the cost of his fellow-man. But, in
reality. Nature knows no such bridgeless gulf between
the human and the non-human intelligence ; and it is
impossible, in the light of modem science, to draw any
such absolute line of demarcation between man and
" the animals *' as in the now discredited theory of
Descartes. We are learning to get rid of these " anthro-
pocentric ** delusions, which, as has been pointed out by
Mr. E. P. Evans, "treat man as a being essentially
different and inseparably set apart from all other sentient
creatures, to which he is bound by no ties of mental
affinity or moral obligation**; whereas, in fact, "man is
as truly a part an3 product of Nature as any other animal,
* Humane Science Lectures : Summary of address given by
Prince Kropotkin at Essex Hall, November 17, 1896.
t *' Study of Animal Life.'*
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THE APPEAL TO NATURE 27
and this attempt to set him up as an isolated point outside
of it is philosophically false and morally pernicious."*
The talk, then, about Nature being " one with rapine "
is a mere form of special pleading, which will not stand
examination in the full light of fact. If man is deter-
mined to play the part of tiger among his less powerful
fellow-beings, he will have to go elsewhere than to
Nature to obtain a warrant for his deeds, for as far as
the indications of Nature carry weight, they suggest that
man, by his physical structure and his compassionate
instincts, belongs unmistakably to the sociable, and not
the predatory tribes ; and that by constituting himself a
" beast of prey " on a vast artificial scale, he is doing the
greatest possible wrong to nature {ue., to his own nature)
instead of conforming to it. Our innate horror of blood-
shed — a horror which only long custom can deaden, and
which, in spite of past centuries of violence, is so powerful
at the present time — is proof that we are not naturally
adapted for a sanguinary diet; and, as has often been
pointed out, it is only by delegating to others the detested
work of slaughter, and by employing cookery to con-
ceal the uncongenial truth, that thoughtful persons can
tolerate the practice of flesh-eating. If Nature pointed
us to such a diet, we should feel the same instinctive
appetite for raw flesh as we now feel for ripe fruit, and a
slaughter-house would be more delightful to us than an
orchard. It is not Nature, but custom, that is the
guardian deity of the flesh-eater.
But we have not quite exhausted the appeal to Nature ;
we have still to speak of the common objection to •vege-
tarianism that " it is necessary to take life."
Anthropologist : I have a most important argument to put
before you. Must you not face the fact that, in this imperfect
world, It is necessary to take life ? How can it be immoral to
do what necessity imposes ?
Vegetarian : We do not say that it is immoral to " take
life," but that it is immoral to take life unnecessarily. It is not
immoral, for instance, to destroy rats and mice, because it is
* ** Evolutional Ethics and Animal Psychology."
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28 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
necessary to do so. It is immoral to kill animals for the table,
because it is not necessary to do so. Did you ever tread on
a beetle ?
Anthropologist : Yes, by accident. I could not help it.
I am a most humane man.
Vegetarian : Of course. But supposing that you wished to
murder someone, would you think yourself justified in doing so
because you had trodden on beetles — because, in fact, sometimes
it is " necessary to take life ?"
Anthropologist : Certainly not. How can you suspect me
of being so immoral? There is a great difference between
taking the life of a beetle by accident and of a man by design.
There are degrees of responsibility, you know.
Vegetarian : Ah I you have got your answer, then.
How is it, we wonder, that rational beings can commit
themselves to such irrational arguments as this appeal to
what is called " Nature " but is in reality only an isolated
section of Nature, viewed apart from the rest ? Let
Benjamin Franklin himself supply the answer. For in
narrating that incident of the cod-fish to which I have
alluded, he humorously hints that his philosophical con-
clusion, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we
may not eat you," was not uninfluenced by the fact that
he had been " a great lover of fish " in early life, and
that the fish smelt " admirably well "as it came out of
the frying-pan; and he sagely adds that one of the
advantages to man of being a " reasonable creature "
is that he can find or make a " reason " for anything he
has a mind to do. Such is the logic of the flesh-eater,
in which the wish is father to the thought, and mixed
thinking leads by a convenient process to a mixed diet.
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THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT
It will have been noted that the anti-vegetarian argu-
ments which have so far come imder review have been
mainly such as are based on purely materialistic groimds,
as if the question were wholly one for doctors and
scientists to decide ; and it has been shown that, even
thus, there is no sort of warrant for the supercilious
dismissal of vegetarianism as a theory condemned in
advance by some superior tribunal. But the question is
not one for the ipse dixit of the specialist. It is also a
moral question of very great moment, and this fact gives
a new significance to such unwilling admissions as that
made by the British Medical - Journal^ that "man can
obtain from vegetables the nutriment necessary for his
maintenance in health " — j.^., from vegetables only, much
more, therefore, from a vegetable diet with the addition
of eggs and milk. The practicability of vegetarianism
being thus fully granted, it is impossible to pretend that
moral considerations are not relevant to the controversy,
and that in forming an opinion on the vexed problem of
diet we should not give due weight to the promptings of
humaneness.
People often talk as if the humanitarian plea were
some fanciful external sentiment that has been illogically
thrust into the discussion ; whereas in truth it is one of
the innermost facts of the situation which no sophistry
can escape. Our humane instincts are unalterably im-
planted in us, and we cannot deny them if we would ; to
be human is to be humane. " There is something in human
nature," says an old writer,* " resulting from our very
make and constitution, which renders us obnoxious to
the pains of others, causes us to sympathise with them,
* Wollaston, " Religion of Nature,*' rySQ.
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30 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
and almost comprehends us in their case. It is grievous
to see or hear (and almost to hear of) any man, or even
any animal whatever, in torture." And now that modem
science has demonstrated the close kinship that exists
between human and non-human, the greater is the repul-
sion that we feel at any wanton ill-usage of animals.
This is now so generally admitted that the point in
dispute is not so much the duty of humaneness, as some
particular application of that duty, as in the present case
to the slaughter of animals for food. What have humane
people to say to the tremendous mass of animal suffering
inflicted, in the interests of the table, on highly-organised
and sensitive animals closely allied to mankind? By
the imthinking, of course, these sufferings, being invisible,
are almost wholly overlooked, while the deadening power
of habit prevents many kindly persons from exercising,
where their daily " beef " and " mutton " are concerned,
the very sympathies which they so keenly manifest else-
where ; yet it can hardly be doubted that, if the veil of
custom could be lifted, and if a clear knowledge of what
is involved in " butchery '* could be brought home, with
a sense of personal responsibility, to everyone who eats
flesh, the attitude of society towards the vegetarian move-
ment would be very different from what it is now. If it
be true that " hunger is the best sauce," it may also
be said that the bon vivanfs most indispensable sauce is
ignorance — ignorance of the horrible and revolting circum-
stances under whith his juicy steak or dainty cutlet has
been prepared.
BoN ViVANT : What is this ? " Vegetarian " you call yourself?
Vegetarian : And you ? You are a bon vivanU You " live
well," I understand.
Bon Vivant : Not ashamed of enjoying a good dinner, but
not greedy, I hope.
Vegetarian : Nor cruel, I suppose ?
BON Vivant : Cruel I I subscribe regularly to the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Vegetarian : And eat them.
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THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT 31
Bon Vivant; Why not? A speedy painless death is no
cruelty, is it ?
Vegetarian : While you are finishing that choice beef
steak, I will tell you something of the speedy painless death
of steak-producing animals. It may serve as an aid to digestion,
like a musical accompaniment.
Bon Vivant : Oh, you won't spoil my digestion. Fire away I
Vegetarian : Let us suppose, then, that our friend (on your
plate there) hails from Ireland, and at one of the fair grounds,
of which there are several thousand in that island paradise, he
meets the first agent in his euthanasia— the drover. " On such
occasions," says the Report of the late Departmental Committee
on the Inland Transit of Cattle, '* animals already, perhaps,
exhausted and foot-sore fi-om a walk of many miles, stand for
hours on the hard road, bewildered by the beating they receive
and their unaccustomed surroundings. ... It was repeatedly
asserted by responsible witnesses that many of the drovers are
brutally harsh." So ferocious is the treatment that in many
cases, when the animals are slaughtered, the hide, as butchers
testify, simply falls off the back, and is worthless even for use as
leather. I hope your steak is nice and tender ?
Bon Vivant : But why are not the brutal drovers punished
for it ?
Vegetarian : Perhaps because it is not for themselves that
they are driving. Then there is the journey in the railway-
trucks, and we learn on good authority (Report of the Liver-
pool S.P.C.A.) that " the animals have frequently gone twenty
to twenty-four hours without food at the time they are driven on
the boats." As for the delights of the sea-transit, you have
read, I suppose, of what happens in cattle-ships ?
Bon Vivant : Well, of course, in stormy weather there may
be accidents
Vegetarian : No, I am speaking of the ordinary scenes of
the cattle traffic, and say nothing of the occasions (not so rare,
either) when the boats come into port with blood pouring from
their scuppers .
Bon Vivant : Thank you, thank you ! that is enough !
Vegetarian : We find it stated, in the Report of the Com-
mittee of Inc[uiry into the Irish Cattle Transit, that "the
damage sustained by cattle is very serious, and that the principal
portion of that damage is due to their treatment during ship-
ment, while on shipboard, and on debarkation." On landing
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there is more thrashing and tail -twisting, another railway
journey, and then — the slaughterman. You have visited a
slaughter-house,. of course ?
Bon Vivant : No, really, I must protest
Vegetarian : Ah, then it should interest you I The drover's
task accomplished, the butcher's begins. Yard by yard and
foot by foot, with chains fastened to his horns and sharp goads
applied to his flanks, the struggling animal is dragged into the
dark, blood-stained shed, where he is lucky indeed if he be
killed by the first blow of the pole-axe
Bon Vivant : Shameful I I do not believe you. It cannot be.
Vegetarian : Then many well-known eye-witnesses must
have strangely perjured themselves. Dr. Dembo, for example,
says : " Cases m which several blows are required are very
frequent. On my first visit to the Deptford slauglitering yards
I found that the number of blows struck was five and more,"
and he goes on to describe a case which he saw in London,
when twelve minutes elapsed before the animal
Bon Vivant : Stop 1 I will hear no more.
Vegetarian : You will hear no more — but will you eat more ?
It is on yoUy not on the brutal drover or slaughterman, that the
responsibility falls. For this is the " speedy and painless ^ way
in which animals must be slaughtered that you may live well.
" I will hear no more." That, said or implied, is the
most common and the most insuperable argument by
which the vegetarian is confronted. It is the one great
stronghold of flesh-eating which remains from age to age
impregnable. For how can even truth convince the deaf
and the blind ? The horrors of the journey by sea and
journey by rail, of the savage drover's goad and the clumsy
butcher's pole-axe— if the ordinary man and woman,
unimaginative and unfeeling though they are, could see
or even hear of these things, the end of the controversy
would be nearer. By the few flesh-eaters who have made
inquiry, accidental or conscientious, into the facts of the
cattle traffic and butchering trade, it is not denied that
fearful cruelties are committed. Thus the Meat Trades
Journal^ which is not a sentimental paper, remarks of the
sea and land transit, that " our cattle, sheep, and pigs
are carried by sea and rail with the minimum care and
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THE HUMANITARIAN ARGUMENT 33
maximum cost ; they are bundled and shunted about as
if they were iron."* Again, Dr. T. P. Smith, writing in
opposition to vegetarianism, allows that the indictment
of the slaughter-house " hits a grievous blot on our much-
vaunted civilization."! There is a mass of printed
testimony to the same effect, which can be confirmed,
as often as confirmation is needed, by a visit to the
shambles. But that is a visit which the ordinary man
will neither undertake himself nor hear of from the
mouths of others.
Much also might be said of certain special cruelties,
such those involved in the supply of white veal or pdU de
foie grasy and other so-called delicacies ; but it is un-
necessary to dwell on such refinements of torture,
because it is the ordinary every-day aspects of flesh-
eating that are here under debate. It is a terrible fact
that the very prevalence of the habit serves, more than
anything else, to conceal its full import ; and thus a large
number of people, who, in any other department of life,
would indignantly refuse to profit by the cruel usage of
animals, are (without knowing, or at least without recog-
nising it) dependent for their daily food on the continued
and systematic infliction of sufferings which, in their
magnitude and frequency, surpass all other cruelties
whatsoever of which animals are the victims.
These horrors, as I have said, are not realised by those
who are personally responsible for them. Or, rather,
they are not directly realised ; for indirectly it is evident
enough that the more sensitive conscience of mankind
is far from easy about the morality of butchering, and
would show still greater uneasiness but for the quieting
assurance that flesh food is a strict necessity of existence.
This sense of compunction has found at least partial
expression in many non-vegetarian works, as, for example,
in Michelefs "Bible of Humanity." " Life— death !
The daily murder which feeding upon animals impUes —
those hard and bitter problems sternly placed themselves
* December 29, 1898.
t Fortnightly Review^ November, 1895.
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34 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
before my mind. Miserable contradiction ! Let us hope
that there may be another globe in which the base, the
cruel fatalities of this one may be spared to us !"
Now, in view of these facts and these feelings, we have
a right to press the advocates of flesh-eating for some
more explicit and coherent statement than they have
hitherto accorded us of their attitude towards the ethics
of the diet question. If, as the scientists themselves
admit, there is no such "cruel fatality" as that which
Michelet pictured, and if flesh-eating is not to be regarded
as necessary, but only as expedient, then it is in the
highest degree imreasonable to rule out humane considera-
tions from their due share in the settlement of this many-
sided problem. The British Medical Journal has said that
" there is not a shadow of doubt that the use of animals
for food involves a vast amount of pain." The same
paper has said that "man can obtain from vegetables
the nutriment necessary for his maintenance in health."
Can it be doubted, that if the average Englishman were
made aware of these two facts, he would at least think
vegetarianism worthy of a serious trial ? To ask, as
a superior person of science has asked (not merely in
these dialogues, but in actual debate), " How or where
does the moral phase of food-taking enter the science of
dietetics ?" or to take refuge in the common saying that
"one man's food is another man's poison," is simply
irrelevant For diet, like other social questions, has its
moral aspect, which claims no less and no more than its
due importance ; and it is because the " scientific " an-
tagonists of vegetarianism have overlooked this fact that
their judgments have hitherto been so warped, illogical,
and unscientific.
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PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES.
It is instructive to note the desperate shifts and subter-
fuges to which our antagonists have recourse when they
find themselves face to face with the humanitarian
impeachment of the slaughter-house. If one half of the
popular prejudices were true, it might be supposed that,
in the discussion of so ** fanciful " and " Utopian " a
theory as vegetarianism it would be its supporters who
would take refuge in metaphysical quibblings and sophis-
tries, while its opponents would hold sternly to the hard
facts of life. But no ! for when butchery is the theme
we find the exact opposite to be the case, and it is the
flesh-eaters, those level-headed deriders of the sentimental,
who suddenly became enamoured of the imaginary what-
might-be and the hypothetical what-woutd'Othermse-have-
heen^ and are disposed to turn their attention to anything
rather than to the unpalatable what-is.
Now, when the apologists of any form of cruelty are
reduced to the plea that it is " no worse " than some other
barbarous habit, the presumption is that they are in
a very bad plight indeed. Yet we frequently hear it said
that the fate of animals slaughtered for the table is ** no
worse " than that of other animals — those perhaps that
are used for purposes of draught or burden — a quite
pointless comparison, because, even if the statement be
true, the one act of injustice can obviously be no excuse
for the other. Or it may be that the mortality of man
himself, and his liability to disease and accident, are
allied in mysterious justification of his carnivorous
habits, the sunering of the animals being represented as
brief and momentary in contrast with the pathetic human
death-bed — an argument which reached its culminating
point in Mr. W. T. Stead's delightful assertion that of
35 3—2
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36 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
all kinds of death he would himself prefer ** the mode in
which pigs are killed at Chicago," which mode, as he
incautiously let out, he did not go to see when he visited
that city. I do not think we need further discuss such
remarkable preference ; it will be time enough to do so
when we hear of Mr. Stead's lamented self-immolation
in the Chicago pig-shambles.
But it is said that domesticated animals owe a deep
debt of gratitude to mankind (only to be repaid in the
form of beef and muttonj, because, by being brought
within the peaceful fold of civilisation, they have been
spared all the harrowing fears and anxieties of their wild
natural life. This, however, is a fallacy to which the
great naturalists give no sort of sanction ; for it is
obvious that, though the life of a wild animal is liable
to more sudden perils than that of our tame "live-
stock," it is not on that account a less happy one, but, on
the contrary, is spent throughout in a manner more
conducive to the highest health and happiness. Thus,
Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace says : " The poet's picture of
nature red in tooth and claw, is a picture the evil of
which is read into it by our imagination, the reality
being made up of full and happy lives, usually terminated
by the quickest and least painful of deaths." And
Mr. W. H. Hudson : " I take it that in the lower animals
misery can result from two causes only — restraint and
disease — consequently, that animals in a state of nature
are not miserable. They are not hindered or held
back .... As to disease, it is so rare in wild animals,
or in a large majority of cases so quickly proves fatal,
that, compared with what we call disease in our own
species, it is practically non-existent. The * struggle for
existence,' in so far as animals in a state of nature are
concerned, is a metaphorical struggle ; and the strife,
short and sharp, which is so common in nature, is not
misery, although it results in pain, since it is pain that
kills or is soon out-lived."^
Let us proceed, then, to the great sophistical paradox
that it is better for the animals themselves to be bred
and slaughtered than not to be bred at all — that most
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PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES 37
comfortable doctrine which of late years has been a
veritable city of refuge, or grand old umbrella, to the
conscientious flesh- eater under stress of the vegetarian
bombardment. Hither flock the members of the learned
professions, academies, and ethical societies, and fortify
their souls anew mth this subtle metaphysic of the
larder.
Sophist : Of all the arguments for vegetarianism, none, in
my opinion, is so weak as the argument from humanity. The
pig has a stronger interest than anyone in the demand for
bacon.
Vegetarian : Indeed ? And is that the view the pig himself
takes of it ?
Sophist : It is the view / take of it, speaking in the interests
of the pig. For where would the pig be if we did not eat pork ?
He would be non-existent ; he would be no pig at all.
Vegetarian : And would he be any the worse for that ?
Sophist : Yes, for he would lose the joy of life. And not
the pig alone, but all animals that are bred for human food.
Their death is the little price they necessarily pay for the
inestimable boon of existence.
Vegetarian : Now, let me first point out to you that it is not
only flesh-eating that would be justified by this argument. Vivi-
section, pigeon-shooting, slavery, cannibalism, any treatment
whatsoever of animals or of mankind where they are specially
bred for the purpose, might be similarly shown to be a kindness.
Do you really mean that ?
Sophist : I assume, of course, that the life is a happy one,
and the death as painless as possible.
Vegetarian : Neither of which conditions is in reality
fulfilled ! For the wretched creatures that are bred and fed for
the shambles have none of the true joys of life, but from the
first are mere animated beef, pork, and mutton, while their
death is nothing better than a prolonged and clumsy massacre.
Sophist : But it need not be so. It is a mere question of
police and proper supervision. It should be imperative on all
those who confer life on animals to ensure absolute painlessness
for the last moment.
Vegetarian : It ^^ should bt"\ So it seems that this remark-
able kindness of yours is, by your own showing, not an actual
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38 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
but a hypothetical benefit. The animals fulfil their part of the
compact b^ being killed and eaten, and you might flilfil your
part by killing them painlessly — only you dotCt! Are you
serious in talking this stuff?
Sophist : This " stuff" ? Let me remind you, sir, that I have
the authority of such eminent philosophers as Sir Henry
Thompson, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Professor D. G. Ritchie,
and Dr. Stanton Coit. Do you call their academical reasoning
"stuff''?
Vegetarian : What else can it be called ? For, as a matter
of fact, quite apart from die conditions, good or bad, under
which the animals live and die, it is a pure fallacy to say that it
is a kindness to bring them into existence.
Sophist : How so, if life is pleasant ?
Vegetarian : Because it is impossible to compare existence
with non-existence. Existence may, or may not, be pleasant ;
but non-existence is neither pleasant nor unpleasant — it is
nothing at all. It cannot, therefore, be an (advantage to be
bom, though, when once you are bom, the good and the evil
are comparable. The whole question is a post-natal, not a pre-
natal one ; it begins at birth.
Sophist: Well, but supposing you were an animal, would
you not prefer
Vegetarian : Oh, that is a very old question. You will find
it all in Hansard. It was asked by Sir Herbert Maxwell when
he defended the sport of pigeon- shooting in the Debates of 1883.
"He wanted to ask the hon. member whether, if he were a
blue-rock, he would rather accept life under the condition of his
life being a short and happy one, and violently terminated, or
whether he would reject life at all upon such terms."
Sophist : Hear, hear I That is just what I say.
Vegetarian : Then you had better think over Mr. W. E.
Forster's reply, which puts the case in a nut-shell. He said
that Sir Herbert Maxwell " made one very amusing appeal, by
asking him [the member who introduced the Bill] to put himself
in the position of a blue-rock. But this would be difficult, for
the position was not a blue-rock in existence, but a blue-rock
before it was bom." Whereat the House laughed, and sophistry
was for the moment disconcerted.
But for the moment only ; for there have since sprung
up msCby other professors of this metaphysic of the
larder, though none of them, with the exception of
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PALLIATIONS AND SOPHISTRIES 39
Dr. Stanton Coit, have had the hardihood to expound
their theory in detail— a wise reticence, perhaps, when it
is seen how Dr. Coit fared in his conscientious but
humourless essay on ** The Bringing of Sentient Beings
into Existence."
" If the motive," he opined, " that might produce the greatest
number of the happiest cattle would be the eating of b^f, then
beef-eating, so far, must be commended. And while, heretofore,
the motive has not been for the sake of cattle, it is conceivable
that, if vegetarian convictions should spread much further, love
for cattle would (if it be not psychologically incompatible) blend
with the love of beef in the minds of the opponents oif vege-
tarianism. With deeper insight, new and higher motives may
replace or supplement old ones, and perpetuate but ennoble
ancient practices." *
The ** Ox in a Tea-cup," be it observed, may hence-
forth become the emblem of the concentrated humanity
of the ethical societies !
"But we frankly admit,'' continues Dr. Coit, **that it is a
question whether the love of cattle, intensified to the imaginative
point of individual affection for each separate beast, would not
destroy the pleasure of eating beef, and render this time-
honoured custom psychologically impossible. IVe surmise that
bereaved affection at the death of a dear creatvre would destroy
theflavour:'\
What a picture is conjured up by the sentence I have
italicised — the bereaved moralist, knife and fork in hand,
swayed in different directions by the call of duty and the
scruples of affection! And then Dr. Coit goes on to
express a fear that mankind, if they adoped vegetarian-
ism, might become "less powerful in thought"! I
respectfully submit that, in view of the arguments
quoted, there is not the smallest possibility of that.
The plea that animals might be killed painlessly is a
very common one with flesh-eaters, but it must be
pointed out that wkat-might-be can afford no exemption
from moral responsibility for what-is. By all means let
us reform the system of butchery as far as it can be
♦ The Ethical World, May 7, 1898. t ^^i^-
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40 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
reformed — that is, by the total abolition of those foul
dens of torture known as " private slaughter-houses,"
and by the substitution of municipal abattoirs, equipped
with the best modern appliances, and under efficient
supervision ; for there is no doubt that the sum of animal
suflfering may thus be greatly lessened. There will be
no opposition from the vegetarian side to such reform as
this ; indeed, it is in a large measure through the personal
eflforts of vegetarians that the subject has attracted
attention, whereas the very people who make this pro-
spective improvement an excuse for their present flesh
diet are seldom observed to be doing anything practical
to carry it into eflfect. But when all is said and done, it
remains true that the reform of the slaughter-house is at
best a palliative, a temporary measure which will
mitigate, but cannot possibly amend, the horrors of
butchery ; for it is but too evident that, under our com-
plex civilisation, when the town is so far aloof from the
country, and pastoralism can only be carried on in
districts remote from the busy crowded centres, it is
impossible to transport and slaughter vast numbers of
large and highly-sensitive animals in a really humane
manner. More barbarous, or less barbarous, such
slaughtering may undoubtedly be, according to the
methods employed, but the "humane" slaughtering, so
much bepraised of the sophist, is an impossibility in fact
and a contradiction in terms.
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THE CONSISTENCY TRICK
It is certain, then, that the practice of flesh-eating in-
volves a vast amount of cruelty — a fact which cannot be
lessened or evaded by any quibbling subterfuges. But,
before we pass on to another phase of the food question,
we must deal more fully with that very common method
of argument (alluded to in an earlier chapter) which may
be called the Consistency Trick — akin to that known in
common parlance as the tu quoque^ or " you're another " —
the device of setting up an arbitrary standard of " con-
sistency," and then demonstrating that the vegetarian
himself, judged by that standard, is as << inconsistent " as
other persons. Whether we plead guilty or not guilty to
this ingenious indictment depends altogether on the
meaning assigned -to the term ** consistency."
For, as anyone who tries to do practical work in the
world will rapidly discover, there is a true and there is a
false ideal of consistency. To pretend that in our com-
plex modern society, where responsibilities are so closely
interwoven, it is possible for any individual to cultivate
** a perfect character," and stand like a Sir Galahad above
his fellows — ^this is the false ideal of consistency which it
is the first business of a genuine reformer to put aside ;
for no human being can do any solid work without
frequently convicting himself of inconsistencies when
consistency is stereotyped into a formula. On the other
hand, there is a true duty of consistency, which regards
the spirit rather than the letter, and prompts us not to
grasp foolishly at the ideal, like a child crying for the
moon, but to push steadily towards the ideai by a faithful
adherence to the right line of reform, and by ever keeping
in view the just proportion and relative value of all
moral actions. Let it be remembered that it is this latter
consistency alone that has any interest for the vegetarian.
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42 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
His purpose is not to exhibit himself as a spotless Sir
Galahad of food reformers, but to take certain practical
steps towards the humanising of our barbarous diet
system.
Herein will be found the answer to a class of questions
frequently put to vegetarians, as to how they find it
** consistent with their principles " to use this or that
form of food or animal substance. It depends entirely
on what their principles are. If their aspirations were of
the Sir Galahad order, some of the ** posers " would
indeed be formidable ; but as they do not aim at moral
perfection, but merely at rational progress, the charge of
inconsistency hurtles somewhat harmlessly over their
heads. But here let the consistency man have his say :
Consistency Man : But what I want to know is this — ^how
you can think it consistent to use milk and eggs ?
Vegetarian : Consistent with what ?
Consistency Man : Why, with your own principles, of
course.
Vegetarian : Or do you mean with your idea of my principles ?
The two things are not always identical, you know.
Consistency Man : You condemn flesh-eating because of
the suffering it causes, but it seems to have escaped your notice
that the use of milk and eggs is also responsible for much. It
is strange that it has never occurred to you
Vegetarian : My good sir, it has occurred to us years and
years ago. The question is as old as the movement itself. The
cock-and-bull argument, I presume ?
Consistency Man : I ask, what would become of the
cockerels and bull-calves under a vegetarian regime f At
present your supply of milk and eggs is easy enough, because
the young males are killed and eaten by us carnivorous sinners.
But are you not, to a certain extent, participators in the deed ?
Vegetarian: Yes, frankly, to a certain extent (a very
limited extent) I think we are. We are content to get rid of
the worst evils first.
Consistency Man : But is one sort of killing worse than
another ?
Vegetarian : Immeasurably worse. Even if it were neces-
sary under the vegetarian system, to destroy some of the calves
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THE CONSISTENCY TRICK 43
at birth, as the superfluous young of domestic animals are now
destroyed, it would be ridiculous to compare such restricted
killing of new-bom creatures with the present wholesale butchery
of full-grown and highly sentient animals in the slaughter-house.
Consistency Man: You say "if* it were necessary, but is
there any doubt of it ?
Vegetarian: It is not by any means so certain as you
suppose that the slaughter of calves would be unavoidable.
Vegetarians use milk sparingly — far more so than flesh-eaters —
and a limited amount of milk is obtainable without killing the
calf. Nor is there any reason, as Professor Newman has
pointed out, why a number of oxen should not be employed as
formerly in working the land. But I do not wish to take refuge
in future possibilities. I prefer to take the bull-calf argument
" by the horns,'' and admit that, under present conditions, we
are indirectly responsible. Call it inconsistency, if you like.
If it be inconsistency not to postpone the abolition of the
greater cruelties until we also abolish the minor ones, we are
willing to be called inconsistent.
It may be noted, in passing, that the zeal with which
flesh-eaters urge this counter-charge of " inconsistency "
is designed, unconsciously perhaps, to hide an important
admission — viz., that where eggs and milk are used there
is no necessity for butchers* meat, or, in other words, that
vegetarianism is a perfectly feasible diet. "Eggs and
milk," says Dr. T. P. Smith, when objecting to their use
by vegetarians, " contain a much larger quantity of
nutritive material than an equal amount of meat, for
which, therefore, they may easily serve as substi-
tutes."* If this be granted, the rest is a mere battle
of words.
But the cock-and-bull argument, with which may be
linked the objection to the use of leather, is only one of
many departments of the consistency trick. Another
favourite method of convicting vegetarians of incon-
sistency is to start from the false assumption that
vegetarianism is the same thing as Brahminism, and that
any destruction of even the lowliest forms of life is there-
fore reprehensible. " As for the argument based on the
♦ Fortnightly Review^ November, 1895.
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44 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
cruelty of slaughter-houses," says Mr. W* T. Stead, " I
don't see that it bears upon the question, unless you take
the extreme Hindoo doctrine as to the wickedness of
taking sentient life, even in the shape of lice and adders."
That is to say, the terrible and quite unnecessary cruelties
inflicted on the most highly-organised and harmless
animals in the cattle-ship and slaughter-house do not
even <* bear upon " the morality of diet, unless we also
abstain from killing the most noxious and lowly-organised
forms ! Of the same nature is the foolish " when-you-
drink-a-^lass-of-water " fallacy, which ar^es that, as we
necessanly swallow minute organisms m drinking, we
need have no scruples as to the needless butchery of a
cow or a sheep. The savages who in the good old times
used to eat their grandfathers and grandmothers might
have justified their dietetic habits on precisely similar
grounds.
Nor is it only insects and ** vermin " on whose behalf
the consistency man is concerned, for plants also have
life, and therefore if the vegetarian holds that " it is im-
moral to take life " (which he does not)^ he must be
inconsistent in eating vegetables. As an instance of
a common but strange misunderstanding of the vege-
tarian principle on this subject, I must here quote
a passage from the " Science Jottings " of Dr. Andrew
Wilson. Note the triumphant tone of the unscientific
scientist as he rushes to his absurd conclusion :
" I have not yet finished with the food faddist. Suppose I
find a vegetarian who, more consistent than the run of his
fellows, will not touch, taste, nor handle milk, eggs, cheese,
or any animal product whatever. I think it is still possible to
show him that he is infringing the code he lives by, in so far as
its pretensions with the sacredness of life are concerned. Plants,
no less than animals, are living things. Their tissues contain
living protoplasm, which is the essential physical basis of life
eveiywhere. ... I am afraid that the consistent vegetarian
must no longer kill a cabbage if he is to live up to the standard
of morals he sets up as a kind of fetish in his diet regulations ;
and to lay low the lettuce, or pluck the apple from its bough, is
really a direct infringement of the code which maintains that
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THE CONSISTENCY TRICK 45
yott have no right to kill any living thing for food. Really this
is a monstrous doctrine when all is said and done."*
It is a monstrous doctrine ; and what are we to think
of a man of science who attributes such absurdities to
vegetarians, and thereupon holds them up to public
contempt as inconsistent, when by making inquiry he
might at once have learnt that the blunder was on his
own side ? Once more, then, be it stated that it is not
the mere " taking of life," but the taking of life un-
necessarily that the vegetarian deprecates, and that no
criticism of vegetarianism can be of any relevance if it
ignores the fact that all forms of life are not of equal value,
but that the higher the sensibility of the animal, and the
closer his affinity to ourselves, the stronger his claim on
our humaneness.
Before leaving this question of " consistency," as
affected by the gradations of our duty of humaneness to
animals, a few words may be said on the practice of fish-
eating. It was humorously suggested by Sir Henry
Thompson, who, as I have proved in the second chapter
of this work, wrote in complete ignorance of the facts and
dates of the vegetarian movement, that, as vegetarians
have ** added " milk and eggs to their diet since their
society was founded (a, statement quite devoid of truth),
they may perhaps still further enlarge their dietary so as
to include fish. Here, again, Sir H. Thompson only
showed his unfamiliarity with the subject, for his novel
proposition was in fact an old one, which has been
debated and rejected by the Vegetarian Society in its
adherence to its original rule of excluding fish, fiesh, and
fowl, and nothing else, from its dietary. So far, then, as
organised vegetarianism is concerned, those who eat fish
are not within the pale of membership ; but looked at
from the purely humane standpoint, it must be admitted
that there is an immense difference between fiesh-eating
and fish-eating, and that those unattached food reformers,
not few in number, who for humane reasons abstain from
•flesh, but feel justified in eating fish, hold a perfectly
* Illustrated London News^ May 14, 1898.
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46 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
intelligible position. And I would further note that the
very feict of there having been some disposition, wise or
unwise, within the vegetarian ranks to recognise the com-
parative harmlessness of fish-eating, corroborates what I
have asserted throughout — that the raison d'itre of vege-
tarianism has not been a pedantic hard-and-fast crusade
against " animal " substances, but a practical desire to
abolish the horrors of the slaughter-house.
This, then, is our parting word to the professors of the
Consistency Trick. If they had charged us with the real
inconsistency — that is, with sacrificing the spirit to the
letter by overlooking graver cruelties while denouncing
minor ones — ^we should have been fully prepared to meet
so serious an accusation. But as they have not done
this, but have merely twitted us with not attempting
everything at once, and with allowing the subordinate
evil to wait until the central evil has been grappled with,
we cheerfully admit the impeachment — coming as it does
(such is the humour of the situation) from those who are
themselves desirous of perpetuating both kinds of suffering,
the greater and the smaller alike ! We beg to assure
them that we would much rather be inconsistently
humane than consistently cruel.
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THE DEGRADATION OF THE BUTCHER
But this question of butchery is not merely one of
kindness or unkindness to animals, for by the very facts
of the case it is a human question of no slight importance,
a£Fecting as it does the social and moral welfare of those
more immediately concerned in it. Of all recognised
occupations by which in civilised countries a livelihood
is sought and obtained, the work which is looked upon
with the greatest loathing (next to the hangman's) is that
of the butcher — ^as witness the opprobrious sense which
the word " butcher " has acquired. Owing to the instinc-
tive horror of bloodshed, which is characteristic of all
normal civilised beings, the trade of doing to death count-
less numbers of ino£Fensive and highly-organised creatures
amid scenes of indescribable filth and ferocity is dele-
gated — ^in the large towns, at any rate — ^to a pariah class
of " slaughtermen," who are thus themselves made the
victims of a grievous social wrong. " I'm only doing
your dirty work. It's such as you makes such as us" is
said to have been the remark of a Whitechapel butcher
to a flesh-eating gentleman who remonstrated with him
for his brutality ; and the remark was a perfectly just
one. To demand a product which can only be procured
at the cost of the intense su£Fering of the animal and the
deep degradation of the butcher, and by a process which
not one flesh-eater in a hundred would himself under any
circumstances perform or even witness, is conduct as
callous, selfish, and unsocial as could well be imagined.
For butchery, as Sir Benjamin Richardson used to
point out, is essentially a " dangerous trade." It not only
deadens and destroys the moral sympathies, but it has
the physical effect of straining the nerves and weakening
the heart of the slaughterman, and thus naturally induces
a tendency to have recourse to drink. How often, too,
47
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48 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
in reading of some murderous crime, has one seen it
stated that the criminal was a butcher ; as, for instance,
in the Austrian " ripper " case, when, as the papers stated,
a woman of the "unfortunate" class was killed by a
young butcher of herculean frame, by whom it is supposed
a previous victim had also been slaughtered. To have
accustomed one's self to a total disregard for the pleading
terror of sensitive animals and to a murderous use of the
knife is a terrible power for society to put into the hands
of its lowest and least responsible members.
The blame must ultimately fall on society itself, and
not on the individual slaughterman. No one had a better
knowledge of this subject than the late Mr. H. F. Lester,
and this is his opinion :
" We must take into consideration the fact that the ranks of
slaughtermen are habitually made up from persons in whom one
could hardly expect to find the sentiment of pity strongly
developed ; yet, even among these^ there is a certain air of
dissatisfaction with the work they are compelled to do, and a
mixture of insolence and shamefacedness, of swagger and evident
dislike of inspection, which makes one think they know their
trade is a nasty one, only bearable from lack of other employ-
ment and from the good wages earned. But there are plenty
of men engaged in this work of killing animals for food who are
much too good for the business. These will tell you openly
that they dislike the job, but ' people will have meat,* and if
they were to give it up, someone else would step into the
work." *
Again, subordinate to the actual butchery, there are
certain disgusting, if not dangerous, occupations, such
as that of the women who work in or near the cattle
markets at the malodorous task of " preparing animal
entrails for conmiercial uses," of which process the
following accoxmt has been given :t " The women's share
in the ugly business begins when the greasy, slimy intes-
tinal skins come to them for the scraping off of all fat
and substance still attaching to them. They are washed,
* " Behind the Scenes in Slaughter-houses.*'
t Daily Telegraphy July 19, 1897.
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DEGRADATION OF THE BUTCHER 49
twisted up, dressed with salt, and are ready for the
sausage-maJcers, on whose behalf they have been thus
prepared." The journalistic comment is, that "in an
ideal world men would not permit women to do work
from which every instinct of refinement and even decency
shrinks," but that all is over-ruled by " the demands of
present-day cheapness." This, as things go, is undeniable ;
but it would be well that conscientious flesh-eaters should
at least realise what their diet imposes on other people.
That, however, is just what they are mostly determined
not to realise, doubtless from a subconscious apprehen-
sion that, if once they begin to look into this unsavoury S
subject, they may be pushed to the verge of certain
awkward conclusions. Nothing is more significant than
the extreme unwillingness of philanthropists and members
of ethical societies, who debate almost every problem
under the sun, to give serious attention to the question
of butchery — a reluctance which may be taken as one of
the strongest possible tributes to the pertinence of vege-
tarianism. This is said to be especially true of the
philanthropists of Chicago — ^that great centre of the killing c
trade. " No one who goes to Chicago," says an eye-
witness, " should fail to see the shambles. They are the
most wicked things in creation. They are sickening
beyond description. The men in them are more brutes
than the animals they slaughter. Missions and institutes
have been built in the respectable parts of the city from
the profits, and the employees of the shambles have been
left to go straight down to the devil. ... It is the duty
of everyone interested in social questions, of everyone
whose demands necessitate this kind of labour, to wade
through this filth to see these poor wretches at work."*
And so they go their ways, the philanthropist to build
"homes," the ethical folk to talk learnedly, and the
social reformer to concoct schemes for the amelioration
of the human race. Yet, meantime, these very persons
are themselves perpetuating, by their mode of living, the
evil conditions which they profess to be anxious to
♦ New Age^ November 25, 1897.
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50 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
remove, and condemning the pariah slaughterman to
a life of sheer bestiality. "The meat-eater,** says Mr.
Lester, ** accepts the results of this man*s demoralisation
of character. Pious and professed Christians are conlent
to allow the deep degradation of the nature of a whole
class of men, set apart to do the nation*s dirty work of
slaughtering, without an apparent thought of the baseness
of their conduct.**
Here, as I said at the outset, is a distinctively
human question, and one which cannot be evaded, even
by those slippery reasoners who would shuffle out of the
duty of humaneness to animals by pretending (in the face
of evolutionary science) that there is no bond of consan-
guinity between the animals and mankind. By no possible
sophistry can " educated ** people be justified in placing
this heavy burden of butchery on the hands of their social
"inferiors.** The vivisector and the sportsman, have at
least the courage to do their own devilries ; and the work
even of the hardened agents of " murderous millinery*'
and the fur-trade is diversified to some extent by travel
and adventure. But the slaughterman's task is one of
unrelieved, unmitigated brutality, involving the constant
and systematic doing of deeds that are inhuman in them-
selves, degrading to the rough men who do them, and
trebly disgraceful to the polite ladies and gentlemen at
whose behest they are done.
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THE .ESTHETIC ARGUMENT
Closely connected with the humane argument is the
aesthetic argument, the two being, in fact, twin branches
of the same stem. For " humane," as the Latin shows,
has the double meaning of " gentle " and " refined " ; so
that " humanity," in the original conception of the term,
implies not only a moral regard for the rights of our
fellow-beings, but also an aesthetic appreciation of what
is beautiful and pure. Culture and . good-breeding,
together with justice and compassion, are the character-
istics of humane man ; and the fact that this twofold
sense of the word has been well-nigh forgotten in the
education of the modern "gentleman" may serve to
explain why there is often such a grevious lack of gentle-
ness in persons who claim to be refined. Our liteta
humaniores are a mere academic course of book-learning,
the humane element being altogether left out of account ;
and to such bathos has this divorce of gentleness and
refinement carried us that, in some quarters, a ** professor
of humanity " is — a teacher of Latin grammar.
We are prepared, then, to find that the aesthetic or
artistic feiculty of the present day is deplorably narrow in
its scope, and is so ignorant of the true relationship of
humanity and art that it actually prides itself on omitting
from its ken all humane considerations, while it diligently
searches for the beautiful and the picturesque, as if
beauty were a thing detached from the realities of every-
day life ! The bare idea that there is an aesthetic side to
the diet question, beyond the mere delicacies of cookery
and embellishments of the dining-table, would be scouted
as ridiculous by ninety-nine out of a hundred of our
artists or literary men ; for the very force of habit which
.has made them'so quick to resent the least technical flaw
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52 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
in their special departments of work, has left them blindly
iadifFerent to the hideous and revolting aspects of flesh-
eating. To these aesthetes, so-called, the sight of an ugly
house, for example, is a sore trouble and grievance r but
the slaughter-house, with all its gruesome doings, is
a matter of supreme unconcern — nay, rather a thing to
be indirectly patronised and defended. I have known
a case where an aesthetic lady, of great personal culture,
and the centre of a polished circle, stained the floor of
her charming suburban villa with bullock's blood brought
from the shambles in a bucket.
Yet the aesthete does not usually vindicate his car-
nivorous diet and its appurtenances with the old unhesitat-
ing heartiness of the barbarian ; he is somewhat ashamed
of himself — ^imconsciously, perhaps — in these latter days,
even as the cannibal is ashamed when the discussion
turns upon "long pig." Like all the apologists of flesh-
eating, in their respective spheres, he is shifty and evasive
in his defences, and is not too proud, in his moment of
extremity, to have recourse to the " consistency trick,"
and to try to trip up his vegetarian persecutor with the
retort of " You're another." From which signs of grace
it majr be surmised that the aesthete, in spite of his brave
extenor, is not quite at ease in his dietetic philosophy,
and that the products of butchery are, in a very real
sense, the " skeleton in the cupboard " (the larder cup-
board) of literature and art.
^Esthete : Pray, why do you address yourself to me in that
significant manner ?
Vegetarian : Because I understand that you cultivate the
artistic sense. You love to have beautiful things about you, do
you not? So you must needs wish to be a vegetarian.
Esthete; I love beautiful things, certainly. Art is my
vocation. But what has vegetarianism to do with it ?
Vegetarian .Have the arrangements of the dinner-table
de^t?t%heflowS^^-^^^ ^^^^^' ^^ -^--^^ '^^ ^^-^> the
dinbrwel?' ^ ^^""^ '^^^' obviously. There is much art in
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THE .ESTHETIC ARGUMENT 53
Vegetarian: Yet the meats that are served at the table
have nothing to do with it ! Is not that rather contradictory ?
iEsTHETE : I did not say that. The cookery is an essential
point, of course.
Vegetarian : But what of the meat— the thing cooked ?
What is it ? What was it ? And how did it come to be on your
plate ?
iESTHETE : I never think of such questions. So long as it
is nice, I am content. It must satisfy my taste, that is all.
Vegetarian : But are you sure that it does satisfy your taste
in the same way that other things do ? I think not, for you
have never put it to the trial. In no other branch of art do you
take things wholly on trust, but you try them by the standard
of an independent and educated intelligence. In diet, and in
diet only, you ** shut your eyes and open your mouth," as the
children say, and never distinguish between a real innate liking
and the liking that is merely traditional.
iESTHETE : De gustibus non est disputandum.
Vegetarian ; About genuine tastes, I admit, disputation is
idle. But the proverb is not true of the sham tastes to which I
refer. There is a great deal to be discussed about them,
.Esthete : But I assure you my liking for a ham-sandwich
is a genuine taste.
Vegetarian : With full knowledge of the pig-sty and the
pig-sticker. Do not the antecedents of your ham-sandwich
cause you a feeling of disgust ?
.Esthete : Oh, well, if you persist in thinking about it, all
feeding causes disgust. Don't you think there is something
gross in the whole process of ingestion ?
Vegetarian : Then why not gorge on carrion at once ? The
moment you adopt the " in for a penny, in for a pound " attitude,
you sacrifice the whole art of living.
.Esthete : But what of the processes on which vegetarianism
itself depends ? You talk of the filth of the slaughter-house ;
but how about the filth of market gardening ? To watch the
soil being manured, if we let our thoughts dwell upon it, is
enough to spoil all appetite for the produce of the garden. The
more delicious the asparagus or the strawberries, the more we
ought to loathe them.
Vegetarian : There I disagree with you entirely. There is
nothing in the least disgusting, to me, at any rate (and I speak
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54 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
from personal experience), in the manuring of the soil or in any
agricultural process — on the contrary, there is much that is
wholesome and cheering in this chemistry of nature. The
healthy mind takes a delight in gardening, just as it regards
slaughtering with abhorrence. If you want to see the contrast
between the effects of the two professions on those who practise
them, compare the face of the typical slaughterman with that of
the typical gardener. It is as remarkable as the contrast
between a butcher's and a fruiterer's shop.
^Esthete : Well, it is no use talking about it ; our views of
life are different. You are a social reformer and agitator, and
agitation is fatal to the tranquility of art. I am an artist, and do
not care a straw for social reform. My creed is expressed in
Keats's couplet :
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Vegetarian : Yes, but it is possible that Keats's meaning
is somewhat deeper than you imagine. It is not your creed
that I quarrel with, but your own misunderstanding and misuse
of it. That the oneness of truth and beauty is knowledge
sufficient, I admit ; but my complaint is that you do not really
know it, and therefore I regard your aestheticism — the sestheticism
that makes clean the outside of the cup and the platter, and the
outside only — ^as mere vandalism in masquerade.
Nor is even the outside of the aesthetic platter free
from offence, for there is nothing more hideous to the
eye (not to mention the mind) than the " scorched
corpses," as Bernard Shaw calls them, that are displayed
on polite dinner-tables when the dish-covers are removed.
"Among the customs at table that deserve to be
abolished,** wrote Leigh Hunt, " is that of serving up
dishes that retain a look of life in death — codfish with
their staring eyes, hares with their hollow countenances,
etc. It is in bad taste, an incongruity, an anomaly ; to
say nothing of its effect on morbid imaginations.'*
Perhaps, however, the most morbid imagination, or lack
of imagination, is that of the persons who are not dis-
gusted by these ugly sights.
Art and humanity, then, are but two branches of the
same stock : the true humanist and the true artist are
own brethren. To the artistic temperament, in particu-
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THE ESTHETIC ARGUMENT 55
lar, vegetarianism has the surest right of appeal ; for the
aestheticism which can prate of truth and beauty, while
it battens like a ghoul on bloodshed and suffering, has
abnegated its own principles, and has ceased to be
artistic. How would it be possible for the scenes that
are hourly enacted in slaughter-houses to be tolerated for
a moment in a community which had any real artistic
consciousness ? Yet what " aesthetic " protest, except
from vegetarians, is ever raised against them ? Take, for
example, the following extract from some notes descrip-
tive of the Chicago meat factories :
" Slithered over bloody floor. Nearly broke neck in gore of
old porker. Saw few hundred men slicing pigs, making hams,
sausages, and pork chops. Whole sight not edifying ; indeed^
rather beastly. Next went to cattle-killing house. Cattle
driven along gangway and banged over head with iron hammer.
Fell stunned ; then swung up by legs, and man cuts throats.
Small army of men with buckets catching blood; it gushed
over them in torrents— a bit sickening. Next to sheep slaughter-
house. More throat-cutting — ten thousand sheep killed a day —
more blood. Place reeks with blood ; walls and floor splashed
with it ; air thick, warm, offensive. * Yes,' said guide, * Armour's
biggest slaughter-house in the world. There's no waste ; we
utilise everything — everything except the squeak of the pigs.
We can't can that.' Went and drank brandy."*
It is much to be regretted that it is not found possible,
in this enterprising establishment, to **can" the squeak,
as well as the flesh, of the pig ; for such a phonographic
effect might suggest certain novel thoughts to the refined
ladies and gentlemen who contentedly regale themselves
on ham-sandwiches at polite supper-tables. For imagine
what the result would be, in studio and boudoir, dining-
room and drawing-room, if the death-cries of the slaughter-
house could be but once uncanned and brought to hear-
ing. " The groans and screams of this poor persecuted
race," as De Quincey said of cats, " if gathered into some
great echoing hall of horrors, would melt the heart of the
stoniest." But far vaster and more impressive would be
the world-wide hall of horrors which should contain the
* From a series of letters contributed to the Nottingham
Guardian by Mr. J. F. Fraser, author of ** America at Work."
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56 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
bitter cry of the victims of the butcher. Would that it
were possible thus to compel the aesthetic flesh-eater to
" face the music** of his misdeeds !
And, remember, it is not only at a big slaughtering
centres that these ugly trades are carri^ on, nor are
they there, perhaps, at their ugliest ; but every town and
every village has its private torture-dens where the same
carnage is performed the year round on a smaller scale
and in a clumsier manner, and everywhere the butcher's
shop presents the same ghastly spectacle of quartered
carcases hanging a-row, and gloated over by " shopping **
women. One would think it incredible that any lover of
the beautiful could doubt that the national sense of
beauty must be seriously impaired by these disgusting
and degrading sights. But enough of the subject ! Were
we to dwell too long on it, we should be tempted to
exclaim, as was said of another kind of iniquity, " While
these things are being done, beauty stands veiled, and
music is a screeching lie."
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THE HYGIENIC ARGUMENT
The humane and the aesthetic aspects of vegetarianism
are constantly described by the advocates of flesh-eating
as " sentimental," and if it be sentimental to have regard
for the sufferings of animals and the beauty of our own
surroundings, the charge will be gladly admitted; but
there is also, independent of all considerations of humanity,
a distinctly hygienic movement towards the disuse of
flesh food, on the ground that such diet is not only
barbarous but unwholesome. It is held that flesh food
is in itself a stimulant, and that incidentally it is very
liable to transmit disease, while vegetarianism, on the
contrary, is a simple, natural, less inflammatory diet,
which from the earliest times has been known and
practised by a few wise persons as containing the secret
of health. In Germany, especially, the system of
" natural living " has attracted much attention, and the
propaganda of food reform is there mainly on those lines ;
in England less so, but here^ too, there are a number of
vegetarians who are hygienists first and humanitarians
afterwards, and all humanitarians are to some extent
hygienists, so that it is ridiculous, in any serious criticism
of vegetarianism, to leave out of sight, as some of our
opponents do, this essential part of the system.
There is, in fact, a considerable scientific literature on
the subject, a train of thought and experience handed
down from Cornaro and Gassendi, through their suc-
cessors Cheyne, Hartley, Lambe, Abernethy, and others,
to such modern authorities as Sir Benjamin Richardson
and Dr. Alexander Haig ; yet so little known is this
testimony that it might be imagined, from the nervous
apprehension with which the abandonment of flesh flood
is regarded, that vegetarianism were some new and
hazardous experiment, whereon he who enters carries
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58 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
his life in his hands. This ignorance of the long-standing
claims of vegetarianism to a scientific basis is the result
of the indijBFerence and prejudice that have always made
dietetics the most unpopular of studies, those who are in
health not caring to give more than a passing thought to
the hygienic quality of their food, while those who are
sick are naturally suspicious of change or overruled by
medical advisers.
Yet the moment impartial inquiry is made into the
comparative benefits and perils of the two modes of
living, certain undeniable facts begin to appear, of which
the first and most obvious, though not the most impor-
tant, perhaps, are the incidental dangers of flesh-eating.
Many, indeed, and unsuspected by the ordinary man who
takes a " good meat dinner," are the ills that flesh is heir
to, especially in the diet of the poor ; for, as Professor
F. W. Newman pointed out, ** where the population
is dense, the poorer classes, if they eat flesh- meat at all,
are sure to get a sensible portion of their supply in an
unwholesome state.** This assertion is no mere piece of
vegetarian polemics; it rests on the authority of more
than one Royal Commission, the latest of which has
insisted, in the Tuberculosis Report of 1898, that "so
long as private slaughter-houses are permitted to exist,
so long must inspection be carried out under conditions
incompatible with efiiciency.** There is, in fact, no
genuine inspection of the meat killed in private slaughter-
houses, nor is the case (^t present) much better in public
ones, and it is notorious that a large amount of tuber-
culous flesh, examined and rejected under their more
careful scrutiny by the Jews, is thought good enough
to be sold for the use of the "Gentiles.** It would be
easy to quote official figures to show the prevalence of
the mischief, but it is not necessary here to do so, because
the facts are not denied.* The cause of the disease thus
prevalent among cattle must be sought partly in the
excessive demand for flesh food, and the consequent high
price of meat, which is a great temptation to graziers
* See the official facts and figures cited in " Tuberculosis,'*
by Dr. J. Oldfield, 1892.
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to breed from immature stock; partly, too, in the xm-
healthy system of stall-feeding and cramming, and last,
but not least, in the rough treatment to which animals
are exposed during their transit by sea and rail — an evil
which is recognised by butchers no less than by humani-
tarians.
Moreover, in addition to the dangers which flesh-
eaters incur of diseases contagious and paralisitic, there
is the risk of eating decomposed meat under the title of
" table delicacies." Here, as one instance out of many,
is an extract from a London daily paper.
Some exemplary fines were inflicted when summonses con-
nected with the seizure of 13 tons of rotten pigs* livers came on
for hearing. A company promoter, trading as manufacturer of
table delicacies, was fined ;^ioo, including costs, for the posses-
sion of forty-four barrels of the livers, which were deposited for
the purpose of being converted into human food in the shape of
meat-extracts, soups, and other table delicacies. The magistrate
characterised the condemned goods as absolute filth.**
The bearing of such facts on the public health is
obvious. " The shocking revelations,*' it has been said,
" as to the potted meat trade of London, clearly give us
the key-note to the terrible weekly statistics of fevers and
other diseases in the poorer districts of London and big
towns generally. Putrid sheep's hearts — putrid meat of
unknown origin — anything from horse to pug dog — slimy
livers, reeking lights that would poison even a Fleet Street
cat, and moribund hams from diseased pigs are the
foundation of our table delicacies. Ugh ! it is enough
to make a man forswear anything * potted ' for ever."*
But, though these and similar facts are indisputable,
and though so great an authority as Sir B. W. Richard-
son has stated that, " in respect to the propagation of
disease, it seems just to declare that the danger is much
less and much more easily preventable on the vegetarian
than on the animal diet," the flesh-eaters, strong or weak
as they may happen to be, even to the sickliest valetu-
dinarian that ever sipped his Liebi§, are much more
afraid of being infected with vegetanan principles than
t Reynold^ s Newspaper^ March 19, 1899.
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with the poisons of the murdered ox, and would venture
on every drug in the Pharmacopoeia rather than on a
pure and simple diet. Yet more than a hundred and
fifty years ago so eminent a physician as Dr. George
Cheyne, then in a hale old age, had written as follows*:
** My regimen at present is milk, with tea, coffee, bread-and-
butter, mild cheese, salads, fruits and seeds of all kinds, with
tender roots (as potatoes, turnips, carrots), and, in short, every-
thing that has not life, dressed or not, as I like, in which there
is as much or a greater variety than in animal foods, so that the
stomach need never be cloyed. I drink no wine nor any
fermented liquors, and am rarely dry, most of my food being
liquid, moist, or juicy. Only after dinner I drink either coffee
or green tea, but seldom both in the same day, and sometimes
a glass of soft small cider. The thinner my diet, the easier,
more cheerful and lightsome I find myself; my sleep is also the
sounder, though perhaps somewhat shorter than formerly under
my full animal diet; but, then, I am more alive than ever I
was."*
The close connection of vegetarianism with temperance,
simplicity, and general hardihood has been discovered by
many thousands of persons since Dr. Cheyne recorded
it, and has had its latest illustration in the doings of
vegetarian athletes, whose remarkable achievements in
cycling matches and long-distance walks have shown
once more that flesh-eating is not by any means a
necessary condition of physical prowess. It cannot be
mere accident that vegetarians are almost invariably
abstainers from alcohol and tobacco, that, man for man,
they eat more sparingly, dress more lightly, live more
naturally, and work harder than flesh-eaters, and are far
less subject to illnesses and ailments. It is notorious
that in quite a number of diseases, especially those of
the gouty class, a vegetarian diet is prescribed by
medical men, who use for cure what they scorn to use for
prevention. In the works of Dr. Alexander Haig,t the
* The " Author's Case."
t " Uric Acid as a Factor in the Causation of Disease. Diet
and Foods Considered in Relation to Strength and Power of
Endurance.'*
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THE HYGIENIC ARGUMENT 6i
most distinguished recent exponent of reformed diet, a
close study has been made of the "comparative whole-
someness and unwholesomeness of vegetable and animal
foods, and to these writings, together with those of the
other authorities above-mentioned, I would refer any of
my readers who may be under the idea that vegetarianism
has no medical support. The doctors, of course, or those
of them who study the history of their own profession,
are well aware of the hollowness of this common super-
stition, but they still continue to let an ignorant public
fondly hug the belief that vegetarianism is a mere "fad,**
a mushroom growth born of the follies and sentimentali-
ties of a decadent and hypercivilised age.
It is impossible in the limit of these pages, which are
concerned with the logical, not the medical view of
vegetarianism, to discuss with any fulness the argument
based on hygiene ; but it may be stated as a matter, not
of opinion, but of knowledge, that quite apart from all
humane bias, there is a strong case for the reformed
regimen on the ground of its healthfulness alone, and
that a scientific statement of this case may be found, by
those who care to become acquainted with the facts, in
the published writings of a small, but not inconsiderable
succession of medical authorities. Humanity and hygiene
are the twin deities of food reform, and their paths,
though separate for the time, converge eventually to the
same v^etarian goal.
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DIGESTION
We have seen that the scientific apologists of flesh-eating
do not seriously rely on the old bogey of "structural
evidence," though they have certainly not been over-
anxious to dissociate their cause from whatever support
has accrued to it through this too common misunder-
standing. The same is true of that other widespread
superstition, that meat alone "gives strength — *.e?^ that
vegetarian diet, as compared with a flesh diet, is deticient
in flesh-forming constituents— an error which the medical
faculty, as a whole, has secretly fostered and encouraged,
though in face of the existence of the elephant ajad
rhinoceros and other mighty herbivora, its responsible
spokesmen have, of course, not committed themselves to
any such absurdity. Except for the fact that thousands
of ignorant persons are still under the delusion that no
adequate nourishment is to be found in the vegetable
kingdom, it would not be necessary to point out that, by
the admission of all authorities^ the albuminoids, carbo-
hydrates, oils, salts, and other chemical food-properties,
exist in vegetable no less than in animal substances, and
therefore that a vegetarian diet, even without the use of
eggs and milk, has access to all the needed elements.
The professional, as distinct from the popular, objections
to vegetarianism, are based nowadays on quite other
arguments, as may be seen from the suggestive admissions
and assertions made in the following passage from the
British Medical Journal :
"Man is undoubtedly in his anatomy most nearly allied to
the higher apes, and these animals, though they show obvious
tendencies to be omnivorous, are yet, in the main, eaters of nuts
and fruits. But man is not a higher ape, and in the process of
development to his present high status he has become omni-
vorous. It IS true that he can obtain from vegetables the
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DIGESTION 63
nutriment necessary for his maintenance in health, but he has
learnt that he can obtain what he wants at less cost of energy
from a mixed diet^ and he is not likely to unlearn this lesson.^
In the words that I have italicised we have the latest
shibboleth of carnivorous " science " in its changing
treatment of the food question. Vegetarianism is not
" impossible '* (as we used to be told it was) ! Oh, no I
life, and even healthy life, can really be maintained on a
diet of vegetables (how many thousands of doctors have
asserted the contrary!). But the inferior digestibility d
vegetable food — that is the trouble ! The poor vegetarians
must put their digestive organs to so great a strain, and
must eat so large a bulk of food in order to get the
requisite nourishment. Why, then, says the chemist,
should they thus over-tax their systems, when they could
digest a few slices from a dead b!ody at so much less cost
of energy ?
Now, if the chemist were a man of action, and not
merely a ma^ of study, the practical aspects of this
question might at the outset give him pause. Had he
known vegetarians, lived among vegetarians, and talked
with vegetarians, instead of regarding them theoretically,
he would be aware that the average vegetarian eats
decidedly less in bulk than the average Hesh-eater, and is
seldom or never troubled with the indigestion that the
flesh-eater dreads. So far from being compelled to
consume a greater bulk of food, it is the general ex-
perience of those who have adopted vegetarianism that
they eat much less under the new system than they did
under the old, and it is a frequent marvel to them, when
they dine with their former messmates, to see the huge
amounts that they devour.
There is the further consideration, entirely overlooked
in the argument of the British Medical Journal^ that
" vegetarianism," in the current sense of the word, is not
a diet of vegetables only, but includes the use of eggs,
butter, cheese, and milk. For all which reasons the talk
about " less cost of energy " seems to have little practical
* British Medical Journal^ June 4, 1898.
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64 ' THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
bearing on the subject under discussion, and it may be
suspected that the chemical chimera is quite as fabulous
as the phantom difficulties that have preceded it.
Chemist : Now listen 1 I am a chemist, and I'have no time
to think or talk of anything sentimental. To all your views
about vegetarian diet I have but one answer — "Hofmann's
experiments.'*
Vegetarian: So Hofmann's figures have settled this diet
problem for all time ?
Chemist : Undoubtedly. For they prove that the human
stomach can assimilate a greater percentage of animal than of
vegetable substances ; in other words, that it requires a greater
exercise of digestive power to get an equal amount of nourish-
ment from vegetables. What have you to say to that ?
Vegetarian : Obviously this — that it is quite devoid of value
unless we know who were the persons experimented on. No
statistics of the comparative digestibility of foods can be of
practical use unless the habits and conditions of those who
aigest the foods are also noted. Custom and the personal
element are all-important factors in the result. Many vegetable
foods, nuts for example, are readily digested by vegetarians
accustomed to their use, though almost universally found
indigestible by flesh-eaters.
Chemist : I cannot follow you into that. Let us keep clear
of all such sentiment, if you please, and bear in mind the great
precept which Dr. Andrew Wilson, in his application of
Hofmann's figures, has laid down for our guidance, that *" animal
matter, being likest to our own composition, is most easily and
readily converted into ourselves."
Vegetarian : With all due deference to the Andrew Wilson
formula, may I ask what matter is likest to our own ?
Chemist : Why, animal matter, of course.
Vegetarian : Yes, but what animal matter?
Chemist : Oh, we don't go into that.
« JS!?f?^^ri^^^^ • ^"^ ^ ^° ' ^^^ ^ ^^^ yo" to observe that the
^^^^^ ^ ^^^ ^^ ^"^ °^" composition" is human flesh, so that
na««!K "f^ i° *^® Andrew Wilson formula, we all ought to be
SSLTdfgest^^^^^^^^ ^^^"^^ ^""^^^ ^^^^ ^"«* ^ *^^
caSS .' ^^^ "^^^^ '^ '^ ^''' '^^'''^^ ^ ^"^ ^^* approve of
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DIGESTION 65
Vegetarian : Then allow me to read you a sentence from
C. F. Gordon Cumming's book, " At Home in Fiji." " At every
cannibal feast there was served a certain vegetable, also
commonly used by the cannibal Maoris of New Zealand, which
was considered as essential an adjunct as mint-sauce is to lamb
or sage to goose. Its use, however, was prudential, as human
flesh was found to be highly indigestible^ and this herb acted as
a corrective." Now I ask you if that does not logically dispose
of the Andrew Wilson formula ?
Chemist : Nonsense, sir ! I will not discuss cannibalism.
You fail to see that some things, though logical enough, may
not be expedient.
Vegetarian : I am delighted to hear you say that. I beg
you to remember it when you next talk of " Hofmann's experi-
ments." It is possible that flesh-eating, like cannibalism, is
" not expedient," when it is regarded from a wider standpoint
than that of the chemical doctrinaire.
Nothing, indeed, could be more M»scientific than the
attitude taken on this question by " scientists " of the
Andrew Wilson type. For, in the first place, as pointed
out above, it is impossible to arrive at any scientific
conclusion as to the comparative digestibility of vegetable
and animal foods unless the conditions are equal — that is,
unless the persons experimented on are equally accus-
tomed to the food-stuffs they are invited to digest ; and,
secondly, there is the question of the quality of the foods
supplied, for as Dr. Oldfield has remarked, " it is quite
as unfair to judge of the digestibility of the proteid of the
vegetable kingdom from one example of the legumens
as it would be to class all forms of fiesh as indigestible
because veal or lobster happens to be so." Against the
academic testimony of the Hofmann school of specialists
we may confidently set that of so distinguished a practical
chemist as Sir B. W. Richardson, who, by his personal
knowledge of vegetarians and vegetarianism, was pecu-
liarly qualified to judge. ** From experimental observa-
tions which I have made, I am of opinion that the
vegetable flesh-forming substances may be as easily
digested, when they are presented to the stomach in
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66 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
proper form, as are the animal substances of like feeding
quality."*
The true function of the chemist in his general
relation to the diet question is to help the coming
dietary by transferring to the vegetarian system some
of the scientific attention that has hitherto been solely
devoted to flesh meats. "Men of practical science,"
says Sir B. W. Richardson, " ought to be at work
assisting with their skill in bringing about that mighty
reformation. We now know to a nicety the relation of
the various parts of food needed for the construction of
the living body, and there should be no difficulty, except
the labour of research, in so modifying food from its
prime source as to make it applicable to every necessity
without the assistance of any intermediate animal at all."
Why should not the chemist, instead of maintaining, like
Mrs. Partington, a pettifogging and quite futile opposition
to the flowing tide, put himself in the current of progress,
and try to turn his special knowledge to the furtherance
of a noble end ?
♦ " Foods of Man."
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CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE
To try to " change the venue " is sometimes the policy of
defendants in an action at law, and a similar device is
adopted by those who would stave off the hearing of the
vegetarian case. "The tropics" are the convenient
limbo to which this uncongenial subject is most
frequently consigned ; and it is with a proud sense of
humour and self-assurance that the British Islander, who
objects to alien immigration and all foreign frivolities,
warns the vegetarian heresy to keep clear of his in-
hospitable clime. Such diet may be all very well, he
thinks, for passive Hindoos, but not for the hard-working
inhabitants of this temperate zone.
British Islander: Vegetarianism? No thank you; not
here / All very nice in Africa and India, I dare say, where you
can sit all day under a palm-tree and eat dates.
Vegetarian : But I have not observed that when you visit
Africa or India you practise vegetarianism. On the contrary,
you take your flesh-pots with you everywhere — even to the very
places where you admit you don't need them, and where, as in
India, they give the greatest offence to the inhabitants.
British Islander : Oh, well, it's no affair of theirs, is it, if
I take my roast beef?
Vegetarian : Yet you think it your affair to interfere with
the cannibals when they take their roast man. And have you
observed that it is in the tropical zone, not the temperate
zone, that cannibalism is most nfe ?
British Islander : Why do you remind me of that ?
Vegetarian : To show you that all this talk about vege-
tarianism being *' a matter of climate " is pure humbug. The
use of flesh is a vicious habit everywhere, and nowhere a
necessity, except where other food is not procurable.
British Islander : But do we not need more oil and fat in
northern climates ?
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68 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Vegetarian : Undoubtedly ; but these can be readily ob-
tained without recourse to flesh.
British Islander: Then how do you account for the
iact that northern races have been, to so great an extent,
carnivorous ?
Vegetarian ; Perhaps because in primitive times hunting
and pasturage were less toilsome than agriculture. But I am
not called on to " account " for such a fact. Their past addiction
to flesh food no more proves the present utility of flesb -eating
than their gross drinking habits prove the utility of alcohol.
British Islander : Can you quote any scientific authority
for your contention ?
Vegetarian : There is one which is all the more valuable
because it is an admission made by an opponent. Sir William
Lawrence wrote : " That men can be perfectly nourished, and
that their physical and intellectual capabilities can be fully
developed m any climate by a diet purely vegetable, has been
proved by such abundant experience that it will not be necessary
to adduce any formal arguments on the subject." ♦ ** In any
climate," mark 1 And a diet "purely vegetable** ; whereas all
you are asked to do is to forego the actual flesh foods, and not
the animal products. But come now I Ask me the great
question I
British Islander : What is that ? There is only one other
I had in mind. What would become of the Esquimaux ?
Vegetarian : Of course 1 I have always been profoundly
touched by the disinterested concern of the Englishman (when
vegetarianism looms ahead) for the future of that Arctic people.
Well, perhaps the question of what ice-bound savages mip^ht do,
or might not do, need scarcely delay the decision of civilised
mankind. For that matter, what would become of the polar
bears ? If you cannot dissociate your habits from those of the
Esquimaux, why don't you eat blubber? At least they have
a better reason for eating blubber than some people have for
eating beef—they can get nothing else.
The dishonesty of the excuse that vegetarianism " may
be all very well in the tropics " is shown by the fact that
Englishmen, when living in the tropics, make precisely
the contrary statement. "You would be surprised,**
writes Mr. B. K. Adams, from Ceylon, "if you knew
* Rees's " Encyclopaedia," Article, " Man.**
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CONDITIONS OF CLIMATE 69
how much prejudice and opposition there is here. The
most amusing part is that nearly everyone says, it is all
very well being a vegetarian in England, in a cool climate
like that, but out here in this hot, depressing, and ener-
vating climate, you must have meat, and some add alco-
holic stimulant."*
Twenty years ago, just the same "climatic " argument
used to be put forward by the opponents of the tem-
perance movement ; it was impossible here to abstain
from alcoholic drink, whatever it might be elsewhere.
We do not often meet with that argument now ; on the
contrary, it is generally admitted that a disuse of alcohol
brings with it an increased power of hardihood and
endurance. As in drink, so in food. Those who fly to
stimulants obtain a temporary sense of comfort at the
cost of permanent vigour.
But granting that it is possible to support life on
vegetarian diet in northern climates, is it also possible,
asks the conscientious doubter, to live at one's highest
energy under such conditions ? Look at the carnivorous
Mr. Dash's career, it is said, as compared with that of
the vegetarian Mr. So-and-So ! Was not the greater
public activity of the former attributable to his mixed
diet ? To which it may be replied that any such personal
comparison is necessarily useless, from lack of sufficient
data as to the relative powers and opportunities of the
persons compared It is obvious that a man whose
convictions are unpopular will have far less opportunity
of carrying his principles into action than one who is the
mouthpiece of widely current opinions, to the propagation
of which he devotes, perhaps, an equal amount of ability.
For this reason it is absurd to suggest that vegetarians,
or any other class of unpopular reformers, are living on a
less active plane because their activities are not of the
kind that commend themselves to the man in the street —
or to that equally fallible person, the man in the study.
The whole notion that vegetarians are less able than
flesh-eaters to endure a severe climate is a delusion ; it is
♦ Vegetarian Messenger^ January, 1899.
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70 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
not only untrue, but the contrary of the truth. " No one
surely suggests," says Dr. Oldfield, "that the English
climate is too cold for a vegetarian dietary, when there is
the experience of the stalwart, hardy Scotch peasantry,
in a climate far more rigorous, developing brain and
muscle superior to the average Englishman, and this
upon a dietary which for generations has been so largely
vegetarian that no one would dream of saying that the
small amount of flesh eaten by them could have had any-
thing to do with the matter.'**
Anyone who is intimately acquainted with the vege-
tarian movement in this country will bear me out when I
say that the average vegetarian is much less susceptible
than the average flesh-eater to extremes of cold and heat,
and can get through an English winter in comparative
comfort, without any of the " wrapping up '* to which the
mixed dietists are reduced. It is amusing, indeed, after
being asked that common question, " Don't you feel the
cold very much, as you eat no meat ?" to observe one's
questioner attired perhaps to face a moderate London
winter like a German student for a duel — a moving mass
of scarves and furs and overcoats, stoked up internally
with plates of beef and cups of bovril, and shivering
withal. " Poor fellow I" one thinks, " it looks as if you
were the person whose diet might be all very well for
those who live in the tropics, but not for the hard-working
inhabitants of this northern clime."
♦ Nineteenth Century^ August, 1898.
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FLESH MEAT AND MORALS
"Man is what he eats," says the materialist in the
German proverb. The body is built up of the food-stufifs
which it assimilates, and it is reasonable to suppose that
diet has thus a determining influence on character. If
this be true, the reflection is not a pleasant one for the
flesh-eater. ** Animal food," it has been said, " contain-
ing as it does highly- wrought organic forces, may liberate
within our system powers which we may find it difficult
or even impossible to dominate — lethargic monsters, foul
harpies, and sad-visaged lemures — which may insist on
having their own way, building up an animal body not
truly human."*
But here the idealist steps in with a different theory.
Man is not what he eats, but what he thinks and feels ;
it is not what we eat, but how we eat, that most vitally
aflfects us. This is well expressed in one of Thoreau's
daring parodoxes : " There is a certain class of unbelievers
who sometimes ask me such questions as if I think I can
live on vegetable food alone ; and to strike at the root of
the matter at once — for the root is faith — I am accustomed
to answer such, that I can live on board-nails. If they
cannot understand that, they cannot understand much
that I have to say."
There is, however, no real antagonism between these
two theories, for both may be to a great extent true,
though neither wholly so. If mind affects matter, matter
also afifects mind ; if spirit acts on food, food in its turn
reacts on spirit. The one truth that stands out clearly
from a consideration of this subject, and from the witness
of common experience, is that a gross animal diet is
♦ Edward Carpenter, "The Art of Creation," "Health a
Conquest*'
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72 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
inimical to the finer instincts, and that, as Thoreau says,
" every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his
higher or more poetic faculties in the best condition, has
been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.*'*
Plain living and high thinking are indissolubly connected.
Vegetarianism, as I have already shown, is not asceticism,
but if it offer the moral advantages of asceticism without
the drawbacks, is no^ that in its favour ?
But there is a tendency among certain " psychical **
authorities of the present day to eschew thj vegetarian
doctrine as itself "materialistic," and as attributing too
much importance to the mere bodily functions of eating
and digesting. " What does it matter about our diet,'*
they say, "whether it be animal or vegetable, flesh or
fruit, so long as the spirit in which we seek it be a fit
and proper one ? The question of food is one for doctors
to decide ; *tis they who are concerned with the body,
while we are concerned with the soul.'* I wish to show
that this reasoning is nothing but a piece of charlatanry,
and rests upon a perversion of the philosophy that it
claims to represent.
For though it is true, in a sense, that spirit can sanctify
diet, it is not true that a general sanction is thereby given
to any diet whatsoever, no matter what cruelties may be
caused by it, or who it be that causes them. We may
grant that so long as no scruple has arisen concerning
the morality of flesh-eating, or any other barbarous
usage, such practices may be carried on in innocence and
good faith, and therefore without personal demoralisation
to those who indulge in them. But from the. moment *
when discussion begins, and an unconscious act becomes
a conscious or semi-conscious one, the case is wholly
different, and it is then impossible to plead that " it does
not matter ** about one's food. On the contrary, it is a
matter of vital import if injustice be deliberately practised.
To use flesh food unwittingly, by savage instinct, as the
carnivora do, or, like barbarous mankind, in the ignorance
of age-long habit, is one thing ; but it is quite another
thing for a rational person to make a sophistical defence
♦ Walden, " Higher Laws.**
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FLESH MEAT AND MORALS 73
of such habits when their iniquity has been displayed,
and then to claim that he is absolved from guilt by the
spirit in which he acted. The spirit that absolves is one
of unquestioning faith, not of far-fetched sophistry. The
wolf devours the lamb, and is no worse a wolf for it ; but
if^ he seek, as in the fable, to give quibbling excuses for
his wolfishness, he becomes a byword for hypocrisy.
Psychic Philosopher : Why all this fuss about vegetar-
ianism and what we eat ? With the best intention, no doubt,
you regard the matter from too low a plane. Has not the
greatest of teachers himself told us that " Not that which goeth
into the mouth defileth a man ; but that which cometh out of
the mouth, this defileth a man '* ?
Vegetarian : You kfiow well the text has not the meaning
you put on it It could as logically be made to excuse any
swinishness whatsoever. Flesh-eating is not a mere ceremonial
cjuestion of eating " with unwashed hands," as that referred to
in the text, but one that involves the gravest issues of right-
doing and wrong-doing.
Psychic Philosopher : But to the pure all things are pure.
Vegetarian : Possibly — if we know who are the pure. But
the mere eating of impurities is scarcely proof sufficient.
Psychic Philosopher: I cannot take your view of the
importance of this question. To me, as to the Indian yogis,
the choice of food is a matter of indifference.
Vegetarian : I doubt if your butcher's bill would bear out
that assertion. If food is one of the " indifferent " things, why
do you hold fast to your flesh meat, like a snarling dog to his
bone?
Our psychic philosopher, in truth, is a wolf in sheep's
clothing — a carnalist in psychical disguise.*
It will be objected, no doubt, that the injurious effect
of flesh food on morals has never been scientifically
proved, t nor indeed is it possible that absolute proof
♦ It is a curious fact that the Greek word psychic had the
double sense of spiritual and carnal. See TertuUian's treatise,
"Against the Carnal- Minded" (Psychicos).
t Even cannibalism — such is the complexity of the human
character — is not always directly demoralising. " This un-
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74 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
should be forthcoming until vegetarianism is widely
enough practised to furnish data for comparison ; there
are, however, certain very marked indications that can
hardly be overlooked. In the first place, as already
stated,' there is the immemorial belieif, especially
prominent in the usage of monastic orders, but scarcely
less so in all systems of hygienic or spiritual exercise —
amounting, in short, to a practical consensus of mankind
— that a stimulating or excessive diet is harmful to
sobriety and self-control ; as evidenced by the far greater
amount of crime rife among luxurious town-dwellers than
among frugal peasants. Secondly, there is the fact, too
well attested to be challenged, that flesh-eating and
alcoholism are closely allied, and that the drink-crave dies
a natural death when a stimulating diet is withdrawn ;
from which it may be further realised that the excitaticm
caused by flesh food must necessarily, in many cases,
act injuriously on the nerve-system and contribute power-
fully to the vicious habits which moralists deplore.
"The deepest, truest, and most general causes of
prostitution in all great cities," says Dr. Kingsford,
"must be looked for in the luxurious and intemperate
habits of eating and drinking prevalent among the rich
and well-to-do. The 'chief element of this luxury is the
use of flesh and alcohol, which mistaken notions of
hygiene and therapeutics tend to press more and more
upon all classes of men and women. Abolish kreophagy
and its companion vice, alcoholism, and more, a thousand-
fold, will be done to abolish prostitution than can be
achieved by any other means soever as long as these
two evil influences flourish. The young man of the
present day, accustomed from childhood to frequent and
copious meals of flesh, and from early youth to the
use of all manner of fermented beverages and liqueurs,
carries about with him and fosters an increasingly dis-
natural practice," says Captain Burrows in his " Land of the
Pigmies," 1899, " stands by itself, seeming not in any way to
affect or retard the development of the better emotions.''
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FLESH MEAT AND MORALS 75
ordered appetite, which not infrequently assumes the
character of true disease."*
The evils of stimulating diet in the case of the young
have been emphasized by such well-known authorities as
Dr. .George Keith and Sir B. W. Richardson. Here is a
significant passage from the writings of the former :
" I have done much for many years privately, whenever I had
the opportunity, to impress on fathers and mothers the danger
to their sons and daughters from exciting prematurely their
natural desires and passions ; but custom and fashion have so
powerful a hold, especially in the higher circles of society, that
I have frequently had to feel that my efforts were in vain. . . .
The existence of bad habits at schools is well known to the
masters, and they take what measures they can for their pre-
vention. Even when they know the truth, the strength of
custom and habit so imperatively demands a full diet for the
growing youth that they are obliged to fall in with the customs
of the day. But few of them are aware of the main cause of the
evil, and the last thing most would dream of as a remedy is a
simpler diet'* f
So, too, Sir B. W. Richardson :
'* In all my long medical career, extending over forty years, I
have rarely known a case in which a child has not preferred
fruit to animal food. I say it without the least prejudice, as a
lesson learnt from simple experience, that the most natural diet
for the young, after the natural milk diet, is fruit and wholemeal
bread, with milk and water for drink. The desire for this same
mode of sustenance is often continued into after years, as if the
resort to flesh were a . forced and artificial feeding, which
required long and persistent habit to establish its permanency
as a part of the system of every-day life." J
Contrast with this wise and weighty advice the dietetic
habits actually prevalent among the youth of our well-
to-do classes, where we see not only a strong tendency
to over-eating, but a rooted and active conviction that
flesh is the sumtnum honum of food. The fatted calf is
rivalled by the fatted schoolboy; the cramming of
* « The Perfect Way in Diet."
t ** Fads of an Old Physician," chap. xiv.
t " Foods for Man."
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76 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Strasburg geese itself is not more disgusting than the
cramming which makes pdU de fok gras of the moral
fibre of the young. When we find even the Eton College
Chronicle raising a protest against the diet of boyish
athletes, we may be sure the evil is a crying one :
" He [the boy in training] takes a lot of exercise, and finds he
has a good appetite. For breakfast he has a chop every morn-
ing ; we have known some who had two. He also has heard
porridge is nourishing, and that this is why Scotchmen are so
hardy and brawny. He acts upon this information. For
dinner he makes a point of having two good helpings of meat
*to get his weight up,' while for tea, besides having a plate of
eggs and chicken, or something of that kind, he winds up with
a large allowance of marmalade."
Nor is it only among schoolboys that over-eating is
rampant, for the tables of the wealthy are everywhere
loaded with flesh meat, and the example thus set is
naturally followed, first in the servants* hall, and then,
as far as may be, in the homes of the working classes.
To consume much flesh is regarded as the sign and
symbol of well-being — witness the popular English
manner of keeping the festival of Christmas. "We
interknit ourselves with every part of the En'glish-
speaking world," said the journal of the Cosme colony,
in Paraguay, describing a Christmas celebration, "by
the most sacred ceremony of over-eating." A nice moral
bond of union, truly, between colonies and motherland !
What is likely to be the effect on the national character
of such patriotic gorging ?
We come back, then, to the point that though it is not
absolutely true that "man is what he eats," there is,
nevertheless, a large element of truth in the saying, and
the vegetarian has just ground for suspecting that beefy
meals are not infrequently the precursors of beefy morals.
Carnalities of one kind are apt to lead to carnalities of
another, and fleshly modes of diet to fleshly modes of
thought. " Good living," unfortunately, is a somewhat
equivocal term.
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THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT
" The oftener we go to the vegetable world for our food,"
says Sir B. W. Richardson, " the oftener we go to the
first, and therefore the cheapest source of supply." The
case for vegetarianism would by no means be complete
without a statement of the economic ^iew, though
precedence is necessarily given to the motives of humanity
and healthfulness, the higher considerations to which the
idea of economy must be subservient. If it were proved
that flesh food is essential to the real interests of the race,
and that there is no moral objection to the use of it, the
greater outlay would be justified by the value of the
result ; but if such proof is not forthcoming (and it has
been the object of the preceding chapters to show that it
is not), it is obvious that the comparative cost of a flesh
diet and a vegetarian diet becomes a question of high
importance to mankind. What, then, are the facts ?
They are so plain as to be positively beyond dispute,
and it is a cause for marvel what Dr. J. Bumey Yeo can
have meant in describing vegetarianism as "a scheme of
diet which we believe to be utterly impracticable on an
extensive scale, and irreconcilable with the existing state
of civilised man, not so much on strictly physiological
grounds as on general economical considerations,**'^ If it be
in accordance with " general economical considerations "
to pay threepence for what can be procured for a penny,
then only does Dr. Yeo's statement become intelligible.
For the very first fact that demands notice in this
comparison of foods, is that not only does butchers'
meat, pound for pound, cost about three times the price
of the cereals and pulses, but that it is under the further
disadvantage of containing a much larger percentage of
water — that is to say, in purchasing flesh, you have to
* ** Food in Health and Disease."
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78 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
buy the water, and buy it dirty, while in V^^^^^f
s Jds and grains you do not buy ^l^^..^^^^^^^^^!
clean. The following passage from Sir B. W. Richard
son's " Foods for Man " puts the case succinctly :
« If we make an analysis of the primest joints of ^imal food,
legs of mutton, sirloin of beef, rump steak, yeal cutlet, pork
chop, we find as much as 70 to 75 per ''^''^fJZf^h^lew
Oatmeal contains 5 or 6 per cent. ; good ^^eaten flour, barley
meal, beans and peas, 14 ; rice, 15 ; and g^od bread 40 to 45
of water. TakingrThen, the value of foods as estimated by ^eir
solid value, ther^are, it will be observed, a great many kinck of
vegetable foods which are incomparably superior to animal.
We find accordingly, when we turn from this analysis
to the actual charges at restaurants, that, whereas a good
vegetarian, dinner may be got for a shilUng, it is necessary
to pay fully three times that sum for an equivalent m
flesh food. It would be waste of time to argue further
that vegetarianism, whatever its other advantages and
disadvantages to the individual, is much more economical
than flesh-eating.*
But here we are met by the difiiculty that the well-to-
do, on the one hand, are not easily influenced by the
motive of economy, while the poor, on the other hand,
are naturally suspicious of the gospel of " thrift," so often
preached to them by the predatory classes who do not
practise it themselves ; and it must be admitted that it is
perfectly useless for philanthropical persons to preach
food-thrift to the poor, unless by their own method of
livmg they are testifying to the truth of what they preach.
It is sometimes said that vegetarianism is an "incon-
venient" diet, which means no more than that the
adoption of any new system gives trouble at first, though
it may save trouble afterwards. When once adopted,
vegetarianism is, of course, a far more convenient, because
a simpler and cleaner diet than the ordinary one, as is
testified by those who have had personal experience
of both. " Havmg been my own butcher and scullion,"
« c. ^^rr.^^ A^^^^^l Z^'* " Values of Foods," pp. 93, 94, in
Strength and Diet,'' by the Hon. R. RusseU.
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THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT 79
says Thoreau, " as well as the gentleman from whom the
dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually
complete experience. The practical objection to animal
food in my case was its imcleanness, and besides, when I
had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish,
they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was
insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came
to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as
well, with less trouble and filth."*
The assertion that the cheapening of food would cause
the lowering of wages is true only as an answer to the
exaggerated claims sometimes made by vegetarians, that
their system would of itself solve the whole problem of
employment. It would not do so ; and if there were no
force but vegetarianism in the field it is doubtful whether
the adoption of the cheaper diet would in the long run
bring any economical advantage to the workers, though
it would still benefit them morsJly and physically. This,
however, does not detract from the real strength of the
vegetarian argument ; for with labour now organised and
resolute, and yearly growing in power and intelligence,
there is no likelihood that the workers' thrift would
become the capitalists' profit ; on the contrary, it would
clearly add to the resources of labour. To assert that
the working classes should maintain the cruel and waste-
ful practice of flesh-eating merely to " keep up wages "
is pure nonsense, for the same reasoning would justify
the maintenance of drink, or any other extravagant and
useless habit.
What is true for the individual and the class is true
also for the community, and unless flesh food can be
shown to be necessary for human progress, the con-
tinuance of pastoralism, to the detriment and neglect of
agriculture, is a criminal waste-of the national resources.
In this Malthusian age of over-population scares and
emigration schemes it is well to recollect that a remedy
lies close to hand if we would but use it. " Not only is
the earth not yet a quarter peopled," says Mr. W. R Greg,
* Walden, " Higher Laws."
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8o THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
" but even the inhabited portion is scarcely yet a quarter
cultivated. In many countries the soil is barely scratched.
Even in England it is not made to yield, on the average,
more than one-half its capacity."* And in the same
work he points out that "the amount of human life
sustainable on a given area, and therefore throughout the
chief portion of the habitable globe, may be almost
indefinitely increased by a substitution pro tanto of vege-
table for animal food. ... A given acreage of wheat will
feed at least ten times as many men as the same acreage
employed in growing mutton."
In view of the great complexity of the land question,
the variety of the causes that have led to the depression
of agriculture, and the difficulty of forecasting accurately
what would be the result of the adoption of any particular
reform by any one nation, considered apart from the rest,
vegetarians will do wisely in not claiming too much for
the system they advocate. But at least it must be
admitted that vegetarianism would tend to bring about,
in some form or other, that much-desired return to the land,
which, in the present congested 'state of our cities and
busy centres, is felt to be the best hope of stanching a
dangerous woimd. The town is at present draining the
life of the country, and the tide of emigration is still
further sapping the national strength; but if men's
thoughts could be turned hack from commerce to agricul-
ture, if a healthy love of the soil, of firuit-growing, of
market-gardening, could be substituted for the insane
thirst for the feverish atmosphere of the town, it is
evident that a great step would have been taken towards
the cure of the disease. " If the towns renounced flesh-
eating,*' says Professor Newman, "we should see in a
single generation, even without improved land-tenure, a
tide of migration set the other way — firom towns into the
country. Rustic industry would be immensely developed.
AH motive for the expatriation of our robustest youth
would, for a long time yet, be removed, and the country
might be enormously enriched, not in an upper stratum
♦ Appendix to ** Enigmas of Life."
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THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT 8i
of great fortunes, but down to the bottom of the
community."*
So, too, Max Nordau, in some notable passages of his
Conventional Lies of our Civilisation :
" If the soil of Europe were cultivated like that of Belgium, it
could support a population of 1,950 millions much more com-
pletely and abundantly than the 360 millions it now supports
so poorly. . . . Cultivation of the soil is the despised child of
oiu- civilisation. It hardly takes one forward stride where
manufacture takes a hundred. . . . Experience teaches us that
man's labour as a general thing can nowhere be employed in a
more lucrative way than in agriculture. If a man should work
over his' field with the shovel and spade instead of the plough,
he would find that a plot of ground of incredibly small size
would be sufficient to support him."
There is yet another peril that would be lessened in
proportion to the increase of vegetarianism — the depen-
dence of this country on the importation of food from
abroad. " At present," says Mr. W. E. A. Axon,
" probably one-half of the population is dependent upon a
foreign supply. That England should be, and is, the
last country in the world to desire a Chinese wall for the
exclusion of foreign commodities, need not blind us to the
fact that there may be grave national dangers in the soil
of the country providing food for about half its people.
A nation of vegetarians would create such a demand that
rural England would be, if not a cornfield, yet a vast
orchard and market-garden.**!
Enough has now been said to show that the habit of
flesh -eating, involving as it does the sacrifice of vast
tracts of land to the grazing of cattle, and the consequent
starving of agriculture, is far too costly to be justified, in
the face of an extending civilisation, unless by a much
♦ " Essays on Diet," p. 55.
+ Manchester Vegetarian Lectures y ** Vegetarianism and
National Economy.'* For a clear statement of the present
shocking neglect of agriculture in this country, see ** Fields,
Factories, and Workshops,** by P. Kropotkin, 1899, where it is
shown that two-thirds of our food-supply is now imported from
abroad.
6
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82 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
clearer proof of its necessity than ^y which its advo-
cates have essayed ; in fact, it only remains possible, on
its present large scale, tlirough the temporary use of
huge pasture-grounds in remote semi-civiUsed regions
which will not always be available. For pastoralism
belongs rightly to another and earlier phase of the world's
economics, and as civilisation spreads it becomes more
and more an anachronism, as surely as flesh-eating,
by a corresponding change, becomes an anachronism
in morals.* It seems, generally speaking, that the.
foods which are the costliest in suffering are also the
costliest in price, whereas the wholesome and harmless
diet to which Nature points us is at once the cheapest
and most humane.
♦ Against the sea fisheries, it may be noted, the same objection
cannot be raised, as they do not diminish, but supplement the
produce of the soil.
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DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES
We have next to deal with a special class of irregular
foemen, the guerillas and Bashi-Bazouks of the flesh-
eater's army, whose game it is to waylay and harass the
vegetarian movement by a small fire of doubts and
difficulties as to what the future has in store. The
alarmists they are, whose apprehensive minds are con-
cerned not so much with the rightness or wrongness of
the system, as with the anxieties of ** what would happen *'
if the triumph of vegetarianism should be won ; and so
gloomy are their forebodings as to suggest a probable
collapse of the whole fabric of society, if once that great
prop and mainstay of civilisation— the habit of eating
dead animals — should be disloyally undermined.
Now, at the outset, it should be said that the well-
worn method of trying to discredit new principles by
" wanting to know " beforehand exactly how everything
will happen, is in many cases a foolish and fraudulent
device. There are, of course, certain quite legitimate
questions, as to the general scope and practicability of any
proposed reform, to which reformers must be prepared
to make answer before they can expect to prevail, and
to such questions vegetarians have a convincing reply ;
but when the inquisition takes the form of asking for
a present explanation of future developments, and for
a foreknowledge of details which, in the very nature of
things, are unknowable, then it is well to make it clear
from the beginning that we will be no parties to any such
waste of time. Reasonable foresight is one thing, the
gift of prophecy is another ; and it is in no wise the duty
of those who are working towards a more or less distant
goal, to give a precise geometrical survey of their
Promised Land.
In the case of vegetarianism the answerable doubts
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84 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
and difficulties fall mostly under two heads, relating first
to the alarming discomforts which the loss of flesh-food
would entail upon mankind, and secondly to the not less
grievous straits to which the animals themselves would
be reduced under so misguided a r6gime. Let us take
the selfish view first, as containing, perhaps, a modicum
of real feeling, which can scarcely be found in that
suspicious concern for the animals. There are some
folk, it seems, over whose troubled minds there really
does hang, like a nightmare, the alarmist's vision of a
world impoverished and dismantled by vegetarianism —
a world sans leather, sans bone, sans soap, sans candles,
sans manure, sans everything.
Alarmist : But this is mere trifling. It is idle to talk of the
humanity, the wholesomeness, the economy of a vegetarian
diet, while you are overlooking the disastrous consequences
that stare you in the face. We may perhaps be able, as you
say, to exist without meat, but what could we do without
leather and the other animal substances on which civilisation
depends ?
Vegetarian : Well, I suppose we should take care not to be
without them, or something just as good.
Alarmist : How could we do that, if there were no carcases
to supply us with hides, bone, and tallow ? In your devotion to
an ideal you seem to forget that if your principles prevailed, we
might wake up some fine morning to find ourselves confronted
by the dislocation of the boot trade, the bookbinding trade, the
harness trade, and a hundred others. Thousands of men and
women would be thrown out of work, and we should soon have
no boots, no portmanteaus, no soap, no candles, no knife-
handles. It would be a downright relapse into barbarism.
Vegetarian : But, happily, your lurid picture is based on
the false assumption that vegetarianism would come about by
a sudden and mstantaneous conversion. That is not the way
in which great changes are accomplished. They are a matter
of years and centuries, not of days and weeks ; and the ** fine
morning" you spoke of will be a gradual morning of very
extensive dul-ation.
Alarmist : Well, but that is only putting off the evil day — it
would come at last.
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DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES 85
Vegetarian : But would not something else have also been
coming meantime ? Would not the demand, in this as in all
other usages of life, have produced the corresponding supply ?
There is no need, however, to speculate as to what would
happen, because it is happening already.
Alarmist : What is happening ?
Vegetarian : The articles which you named are being sup-
plied in substitutes from the vegetable kingdom. Slowly and
tentatively at first, as is inevitable while vegetarians are so few
in numbers ; but vegetarian boots, vegetarian soap, and vege-
tarian candles are now in the market, and as the movement
spreads, the demand will be proportionately greater. So pray
do not alarm yourself about the dislocation of trade, for the
whole change, great as it is, will come to pass imperceptibly,
and will never bring a moment's inconvenience to anyone.
Mankind, as it happens, is not so helpless, so uninventive, so
literally "hidebound," as to let its progress be dependent on
skins, bones, and guts.
There is a good deal of unintended humour, too, in
some of the difficulties that are alleged. Thus, vege-
tarians are often asked how the land could be fertilised
without the use of animal manure, it being apparently
forgotten that ex nihilo nihil fit, and that animals can only
return to the land in manure what they have previously
taken from it in food ; also that by our absurdly wasteful
drainage system we are all the time poisoning our seas
and rivers with a mass of sewage which would be amply
sufficient for the soil. " Let the land," says Mr. William
Hoyle, " only receive, in the shape of manure, the sewage
and refuse from the teeming population of our towns and
villages, in addition to the other means which are applied
to it, and let it be properly drained and cultivated, and
there is hardly anv limit to its power of production."*
But it is superfluous to spend time in answering such
questions, for their silliness is far in excess of their
honesty. For years the opponents of vegetarianism in
the press had been asking, " What should we do without
leather ?" etc. ; yet as soon as the substitutes for these
articles began to be exhibited at the annual Vegetarian
♦ "Our National Resources," 1889.
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86 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Congress, the note was changed, and the reporters
remarked that the exhibition was " not of much interest,"
until we found the London correspondent of a big
provincial paper actually complaining that ** the crusade
against meat of every kind, and even against leather (at this
exhibition they have boots and shoes made of imitation
leather), is carrying the reform a little too far." Our
critics are hard to satisfy. We are going <* a little too
fiar " if we produce a substitute for leather ; if we do not
produce one, we are not going far enough.
And now, with all becoming gravity, we turn to the
second branch of our subject — the disinterested inquiry
as to **what would become of the animals" if we ceased
to kill them for food. " If the life of animals,*' says
Dr. Paul Cams," had to be regarded as sacred as human
life, there can be no doubt about it that whole industries
would be destroyed, and human civilisation would at
once drop down to a very primitive condition. Many
millions would starve, and large cities would disappear
from the face of the earth. But the brute creation would
suffer too. There might be a temporary increase of
brute life, but certainly not of happiness. Cattle would
only be raised for draught-oxen and milk-kine, and they
would not die the sudden death at the hands of the
butcher, but slowly of old age or by disease."*
A pathetic picture, indeed ! It does not for a moment
occur to this sapient prophet of disaster that the adoption
of vegetarianism will necessarily be gradual, and further
that vegetarians do not hold the life of animals to be " as
sacred as human life." To critics who do not even
ascertain what the system means before they reject it,
and who ignore all consideration of the degrees and
relative sacredness of the various forms of life, vege-
tarianism must naturally seem to be a confused jumble
of thought — the confusion, in reality, being altogether on
their own side.
Alarmist : There is another aspect of this question, and a
very grave one. If flesh-eating were abolished, what would
become of the animals ?
♦ "The Open Court," 1898.
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DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES 87
Vegetarian : Yes, let us talk about that fearfiil contingency.
You think they would be thrown out of employment, so to
speak — would find their careers cut short, or raUier left long ?
Alarmist : It is no joking matter. Would they not run
wild in ever-increasing numbers, and perhaps overrun the
land, or, if food failed them, lie dead and dying about our
roadways and suburbs ?
Vegetarian : Before I relieve your anxiety on this point,
. may I just remark that this second difficulty seems to counter-
balance the former one? If every suburban householder is
likely to have a dead ox against his garden-gate, we evidently
need not fear the failure of the leather and tallow trade. But
once again you are mistaken. You have overlooked the fact
that the breeding of animals is not free and. unrestricted, but
is kept within certain limits, and carefully regulated by man ;
so that if the demand for butchers' meat should gradually
decline, there would be no more alarming result than a corre-
sponding gradual decline in the supply from the breeder.
Alarmist : Well, I don't know. I sadly doubt whether
things would balance themselves so comfortably.
Vegetarian : Ah, you think that some neglected old porker,
like Scott's " Last Minstrel," would be left out in the cold.
For, well a-day I their date was fled,
His tuneful brethren all were dead ;
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Longed to be with them and at rest.
But no ; for look at the case of the donkey. We do not (know-
ingly) eat donkeys, yet a dead donkey is proverbially a rare
sight. Nor are we overrun with donkeys — at least, not in the
sense referred to.
Alarmist : Yet I understand that in India, where there is
a reluctance to kill animals, they are often in wretched plight.
Vegetarian : True ; but we were talking not of killing
animals but of eating them. Vegetarianism is not Brahminism ;
we would kill when necessary, whether for our own sake or the
animals', but we would not breed them in vast numbers in order
to kill, nor kill them in order to eat. Surely the distinction is
a clear one?
The attitude of vegetarians towards this subject is
indeed plain enough for those who wish to understand it.
Regarding the slaughter of animals for food as cruel and
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88 THE LOGI,C OF VEGETARIANISM
unnecessary, they advocate its discontinuance (a process
which, if it comes about at all, will, as I have shown, be
a gradual one, and will at no point cause any sudden dis-
ruption of existing conditions), but this does not commit
them to the absurd belief that animal life, in all its various
grades, is absolutely sacred and inviolable. Must we not
suspect that the apologists of flesh-eating who make
these childish alarums and excursions are fain to do so
from some inner conviction of the weakness of their own
case ?
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BIBLE AND BEEF
" Bible and Beer " is the title that is sometimes sarcasti-
cally applied to the political alliance between churchmen
and publicans ; and in like manner the dietetic alliance
between the " unco* guid *' and the butchers may be not
inaptly designated as Bible and Beef. When all else fails, -
the authority of Holy Writ is triumphantly cited by the
bibliolatrous flesh- eater as the great court of appeal to
which the food question must be carried ; and here at
least, it is pleaded, there can be no doubt as to the
verdict. " It seems to me," wrote Dr. William Paley,
more than a hundred years ago, ** that it would be
difficult to defend this right [to the flesh of animals] by
any arguments which the light and order of Nature
afibrd, and that we are beholden for it to the permission
recorded in Scripture."*
It is a far cry from the theologian of 1784 to the Meat
Trades' Journal of to-day, but from an editorial article we
learn that the organ of the butchering trade is animated
by the same profound sense of piety. " The great
Creator of all flesh," it says, " gave us the beasts of the
field, not only for our food, but for other purposes equally
as essential to us. The grass must be eaten by our flocks
and herds, otherwise the fertility of the soil would vanish.
It was a frightful punishment on the Egyptian [sic] King
that he should be reduced to the level of the beasts of the
field and eat grass."!
Now, waiving the fact that grass is not precisely the
diet that vegetarians adopt, and that it is, therefore, no
reproach to vegetarianism if Nebuchadnezzar, not being
a ruminant, found such a regimen distasteful, we must
recognise that there is a widespread idea among religious
♦ " Moral and Political Philosophy."
t November 19, 1892.
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people that the lower animals were ** sent " us as food,
and that the practice of flesh-eating has the seal of
biblical sanction. In meeting this prejudice, there is a
right line and a wrong line of reasoning, both of which
have at different times been followed by vegetarian
speakers.
The wrong line is to attempt to answer the texts
quoted as favourable to flesh-eating by pitting against
them other texts as favourable to vegetarianism — a
course which not only degrades the Bible into a text-
book for disputants,* but also surrenders the most sacred
claim of the reformed diet — viz., its appeal not to this or
to that textual authority, which some thinkers accept
and others deny, but to the universal principle of
humanity and justice.
• The right line is to show, first, that it is wholly im-
possible, in the face of modern knowledge and evolutional
science, to maintain the old " anthropocentric '* idea
which regarded man as the sum and centre of the
universe, a monarch for whose special benefit all else
was created ; and, secondly, that the ancient Hebrew
scriptures, whatever be their exact significance for
Christian readers (a matter with which we are not here
concerned), cannot be regarded as affording any clue to
the solution of modern problems which .have arisen
centuries later. It would be no whit more absurd to
argue that negro-slavery is justifiable because it was not
condemned in the Bible than to claim scriptural sanction
for the cruelties of butchery because the Jews were flesh-
eaters. And, indeed, such arguments have been advanced
by religious people in support of slavery ; we read, for
example, the following in John Woolman's journal : ** A
friend in company began to talk in support of the slave-
* As in the epigram,
Hie liber est in quo qucerit sua dogmata quisque^
Invenit et pariier dogmata quisque sua :
which may be freely rendered.
This is the Book, to dogmatists well-known,
Where each man dogma seeks, and finds — his own.
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BIBLE AND BEEF 91
trade, and said the n^roes were understcx)d to be the^
offspring of Cain, their blackness being the mark which
God set upon him after he murdered Abel ; that it was
the design of Providence they shotdd be slaves, as a con-
dition proper to the race of so wicked a man as Cain
was.
But it is now time to introduce the textualist in person.
Textualist: Well, sir, I understand that you advocate
vegetarianism. What sort of a religion is that ?
Vegetarian : The real sort — the sort that has to be practised
as well as preached.
Textualist : If it is die real sort, the proof is easy. Show
me the passages in the Book.
Vegetarian : I beg to be excused. I do not bandy texts.
Textualist : What ? You can produce no verses in support
of your religion? I thought vegetarians relied on what they
call the "Ten Best Texts," and here I stand ready to meet
them with five-and-twenty better ones.
Vegetarian : I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am not
one of the text-quoting vegetarians. 1 regard all such methods
of reasoning as wholly irrelevant. There is not the least doubt
that the Jews were a flesh-eating people ; indeed, the very idea
of vegetarianism (that is, a deliberate and permanent disuse of
flesh-food for moral and hygienic reasons) was wholly unknown
to them. What, then, can be the use of hunting up Bible-
texts which do not refer, one way or the other, to 5ie point at
issue ?
Textualist : But if it was unknown and immentioned in the
Bible, what hope for vegetarianism ? It perishes like all else
that is unscripturaL
Vegetarian : The same hope as for the abolition of slavery,
or any other humane cause that has had birth in our modem
era. We live and learn.
Textualist: But it is written, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat."
What is your answer to that ?
Vegetarian : It needs no answer, as you will see if you
study the context.
Textualist : Then you have not a single text to set against
the injunction with which I confront you ?
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92 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
Vegetarian: Not one — unless it be, "Answer not a fool
according to his folly."
To repel texts with texts is a futility to which vege-
tarians as a body have fortunately not committed them-
selves, because vegetarianism appeals, without reference
to religion, to the common sentiment of humaneness, and
numbers amongst its adherents men of every nationality
and creed. If biblical vegetarians have engaged in con-
troversy with biblical flesh-eaters, that is their own
concern ; and we may rest assured that the battle will be
a sham one, as the firing is with blank cartridge on both
sides.
Apart, however, from such irrational argument, there
is a sense in which an appeal may be fairly made to the
Bible, as to any other great ethnical scripture or world-
literature — that is, to the spirit, as distinguished from the
letter, the context as distinguished from the text. That
vegetarians, preaching and practising a doctrine of love
and humaneness, should quote, " Behold I have given
you every herb bearing seed ... to you it shall be for
meat," as indicating the ideal primitive diet, and " They
shall not hurt nor destroy in sill my holy mountain," as
prophetic of the ideal future, is just and appropriate, for
such passages, though dealing with poetry rather than
fact, are far more suggestive than any textual evidence ;
and when we come to ask what is the spirit of the New
Testament towards such instincts as that from which
vegetarianism springs — the desire to increase the happi-
ness and lessen the suffering of all sentient life — ^it is
plain that here, at least, the vegetarian is on unassailable
ground.
But the answer to the biblical flesh-eater lies still
nearer at hand. For the moment any attempt is made
by hipi to ally the modem religious spirit with the
maintenance of the slaughter-house, the incongruity of
his position is revealed. Take "grace before meat," for
instance, and note the flat impiety of offering thanks to
God over the body of a fellow-being that has been cruelly
slaughtered for the sake of our " pleasures of the table."
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BIBLE AND BEEF 93
As Leigh Hunt has remarked : " It is not creditable to a
thinking people that the two things they most thank God
for should be eating and fighting. We say grace when
we are going to cut up lamb and chicken, and when we
have stuffed ourselves with both to an extent that an
orang-outang would be ashamed of; and we offer up
our best praises to the Creator for having blown and
sabred his * images,' our fellow-creatures, to atoms, and
drenched them in blood and dirt. This is odd. Strange
that we should keep our most pious transports for the
lowest of our appetites and the most melancholy of our
necessities ; that we should never be wrought up into
paroxysms of holy gratitude, but for bubble-and-squeak
or a good-sized massacre 1"
But why, it may be asked, if the practice of flesh-
eating is such as it is here described, do "religious"
people acquiesce in it ? Why indeed ! except that, in
these personal matters of every-day life, the religionism of
to-day, like the stoicism of old, has a tendency to respect
the letter, but disregard the spirit of its principles. The
complaint which modern vegetarianism brings against the
religious flesh-eaters is that which the humaner philo-
sophy made, centuries ago, against the carnivorous
stoics :
" Who is this censor who is so loud against the indulgence of
the body and the luxuries of the kitchen ? Why do they denounce
pleasure as effeminate indulgence, and make so much fuss about
It all? Surely it had been more logical if, while banishing
from the table sweet-meats and perfumes, they had exhibited
yet more indignation against the diet of blood ! For as though
all their philosophy merely regarded household accounts, they
are simply interested in cutting down dinner expenses, so far as
concerns the superfluous dainties of the table. They have no
idea of deprecatmg what is murderous and cruel."'^
And so is it nowadays with the champions of Bible
and Beef, for, like all formalists, they sacrifice the sub-
stance of religion to the shadow, and while for ever
* Plutarch, "On Flesh -Eating," quoted in "The Ethics of
Diet," by Howard Williams.
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94 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
quoting the sacred names of justice and loving-kindness,
not only oppose those principles when in conflict with
their own appetites, but actually base their opposition on
the authority of their " scripture." It would be im-
possible to do the Bible a deadlier wrong than this ;
for whether it be " inspired " or not, it is by universal
consent a great literary monument, and those who
profess to reverence it most should be the last to wish to
utilise it as a handbook for reactionists — a store from
which to draw irrelevant quotations for obstructing the
progress of reform.
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THE FLESH-EATER'S KITH AND KIN
There is nothing so pleasant as the reunion of long-
separated kinsfolk, and it is the cheerful duty of this
chapter to exhibit the flesh-eater in what may be called
his domestic relationship, to wit, his undoubted, but
somewhat forgotten, connection with the cannibal and
the blood-sportsman. For, disguise it as he may, he
cannot altogether escape the fact that this kinship is a
real one. Kreophagist and anthropophagist, butcher
and amateur butcher, are but different branches of one
and the same great predatory stock. The cannibal and
the sportsman are the wicked uncles of the pious flesh-
eater, unrespectable descendants from a common ancestry,
who have failed to adapt themselves to modern require-
ments, and, like belated Royalists in a Commonweal,
have continued to play the old privileged game when its
date is over-past, an indiscretion which has caused them
— the cannibal especially — to be ignored as much as
possible by their more cautious relatives. We are all
familiar with that chapter of "The Egoist " (the ** Minor
Incident showing an Hereditary Aptitude in the Use of
the Knife"), in which the youthful Sir Willoughby
Patterne, already an adept at ** cutting," is "not at
home" to his poor relation, the middle-aged unpresen-
table lieutenant of marines. '< Considerateness dismisses
him on the spot without parley." Even such is the
attitude of the respectable flesh-eater towards the blood-
thirsty cannibal, and in a less extent also towards the
devotee of murderous " sport."
But to the student of the food question these antique
types have no little interest, as a survival from an earlier
and more innocent phase of flesh-eating when the old
brutality was as yet untempered by the new spirit of
humaneness. They exhibit kreophagy in its extreme
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logical form — an anachronism, no doubt, and a reductio
ad absurdum in the present age — but at least logical, and,
therefore, not to be overlooked by those who, in their
hostility to food reform, are so fond of appealing to logia
The sportsman, for instance, is an old-world barbarian
born into a civilised era, a representative of the age
when flesh-food could only be obtained by the chase, and
he is candid enough to avow that he does his killing, not
like the butcher, in order to earn a livelihood, but for the
brutal reason that he enjoys it. "The instincts of the
primeval man," it has been well said, ** food-hunting,
predatory, self-preserving, re-emerge in the modem :
moral sanctions are disregarded, the rights of inferior
races are forgotten, and the hunter feels himself, figura-
tively speaking, naked, savage, bloodthirsty, and un-
ashamed."* A butcher he certainly is, but an amateur
butcher only, for it can hardly be contended that the
preserving of game increases the national food-supply, in
view of the fact that pheasants, hares, and even rabbits,
are sold at a price far below their actual cost of produc-
tion, and are thus a direct tax on the public resources. The
blood-sportsman, then, is a member of the carnivorous
family by another line of descent, which has kept a touch
of the rank primitive wildness even to the present day ;
and this one thing alone can be said in his favour, that
when he butchers in sport, he at least does the butchery
himself, and does not delegate the filthy task to others.
He is his own slaughterman — a mere and simple savage.
Cannibalism, again, is simply flesh-eating, free from
those sentimental ** restrictions " which Sir Henry
Thompson and his fellow scientists deplore, and the
cannibal's only fault, judged from the scientist's stand-
point, is that he carries out the scientific doctrine not
wisely but too well. For this reason every lecture on
vegetarianism ought to touch on cannibalism as illus-
trating a past chapter in the great history of diet — a past
chapter as regards the leading and so-called civilised
* Robert Buchanan. Preface to J. Conneirs "The Truth
about the Game Laws."
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THE FLESH-EATER'S KITH AND KIN 97
nations, but to this day a present and very instructive
chapter in the world's remoter regions, from which we
may learn certain lessons as to the feelings, arguments,
and fallacies that attend the gradual process of transition
from one dietetic habit to another. The flesh-eater
generally affects to look on cannibalism as something
monstrous and abnormal, a dreadful perversion of taste
which has no connection with the civilised meat-diet on
which our welfare is supposed to depend ; but the real
facts show that the truth is quite otherwise, and that the
position of the cannibal who is being proselytised to give
up his man-eating is in many ways analogous to that of
the flesh-eater who is worried by the vegetarian propa-
gandists. The glories of the old English roast beef
may be instructively compared with the glories of the
old African roast man.
It is amusing to observe that the kreophagist who,
on the one side, regards abstinence from flesh food as an
absurd delusion is equally confident that cannibalism,
on the other side, is an unpardonable infamy, forgetting
that many of the excuses that are made for flesh-eating
might be made with as much justice for cannibalism
also. "Prejudice is strange," says Professor Flinders
Petrie. **A large part of mankind are cannibals, and
still more, perhaps all, have been so, including our own
forefathers, for Jerome describes the Atticotti, a British
tribe, as preferring human flesh to that of cattie. . . .
Does the utilitarian object? Yet one main purpose of
the custom is utility ; in its best and innocent forms it
certainly gives the greatest happiness to the greatest
number."* Nor can it be held that all cannibals are
a specially degraded race, for Livingstone and later
travellers quote well-authenticated instances to show
that tribes addicted to man-eating are sometimes more
advanced, mentally and physically, than those which
* For interesting facts concerning cannibalism, see Professor
W. M. Flinders Petrie's article. Contemporary Review^ June 1897 ;
"The Fall of the Congo Arabs," by Captain Sidney L. Hinde,
1897 ; and " The Land of the Pigmies," by Captain Guy Burrows,
1899.
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98 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
abstain from such diet ; and as to the hygienic merits of
the regimen, does it not stand on record, in an old
English ballad, that Richard Cceur de Lion was cured
of a dangerous malady by eating a Turk's head, which
was served up to him as the best substitute for pork?
The kreophagist at present is able to pass unlimited
censure on the cannibal, because the poor savage has
not the wit to argue with the civilised man ; but if, in
these days of University Extension schemes, such a
person as a scientific anthropophagist should ever
make his appearance, who can say that the position
might not be somewhat reversed ?
Vegetarian : Let me introduce you, gentlemen. You are
blood-relations, I think, and should have much to say to each
other. The Kreophagist — the Anthropophagist.
Kreophagist : Good morning, uncle. But I cannot admit
the relationship if it is true that you are addicted to the atrocious
habit of cannibalism.
Anthropophagist: How atrocious, nephew? If you eat
one kind of flesh, why should you abstain from another ? Are
you aware that they are chemically identical? Pig or *^long
pig " — where is the difference ?
Kreophagist : Where is the difference ? Can you ask me
suc];i a question ?
Vegetarian : It is uncommonly like the question you have
been asking me /
Anthropophagist : Your objection to human flesh is
altogether a sentimental one. You are a food faddist. It is the
universal law of nature that animals should prey on one another.
Kreophagist : It is not my nature to eat my fellow-beings.
Vegetarian : Why, that is the very same answer that I
made ioyou/
Anthropophagist : And pray, what would become of our
paupers, criminals, lunatics, and sick folk, if we did not eat
them ? Would they not grow to a great residuum and overrun
the land ? And the missionaries, too — are they not " sent " us as
food ? And what right have you to the name omnivorous^ if
you restrict your diet in this way ? Why " omnivorous " ?
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THE FLESH-EATER'S KITH AND KIN 99
The discontinuance of cannibalism marks, of course,
an immense step in humane progress, and so long as the
kreophagist does not absurdly claim that it is sl final
step, his case against the anthropophagist is a sure one ;
but if, while denouncing anthropophagy as a barbarism
of the past, he refuses to see that flesh-eating must also, in
turn, be replaced by a more humane diet, he lays himself
open to a raking fire of criticism. Observe, for example,
in view of the historical facts of cannibalism, the absolute
helplessness of Sir Henry Thompson's position, when, as
an objection to vegetarianism, he argues that ** the very
idea of restricting our resources and supplies is a step
backwards, a distinct reversion to the rude and distant
savagery of the past, a sign of decadence rather than of
advance." It is true that mankind has, on the whole,
largely extended its resources; but it is none the less
true that, while it has acquired many new foods, it has
abandoned certain old ones. It has advanced, in short,
as already stated, by a process not of omnivorism, but
of eclecticism, which implies not only acceptance, but
rejection — a fact which knocks Sir Henry Thompson's
reasoning to atoms.
The power which has condemned cannibalism is that
growing instinct of humaneness which makes it impossible
for men to prey on their fellow-beings when once recog-
nised as such. A notable passage in one of Olive
Schreiner's works may be quoted in illustration :
" In those days, which men reck not of now, man, when he
hungered, fed on the flesh of his fellow-man and found it sweet.
Yet even in those days it came to pass that there was one whose
head was higher than her fellows and her thought keener, and
as she picked the flesh from a human skull she pondered. And
so it came to pass that the next night, when men were gathered
round the fire ready to eat, she stole away, and when they went
to the tree where the victim was bound, they found him gone.
And they cried one to another, ' She, only she, has done this,
who has always said, I like not the taste of man-flesh ; men are
too like me : I cannot eat them.* Into the heads of certain
men and women a new thought had taken root; they said,
' There is something evil in the taste of human flesh.' And ever
after, when the flesh-pots were filled with man-flesh, these stood
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loo THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
aside, and half the tribe ate human flesh and half not ; then, as
the years passed, none ate." ♦
A strange comment this on the Andrew Wilson
formula, that we should eat <<that which is likest to
our own composition 1" For what if we have begun to
recognise that the lower animals also are related to us
by a close bond of kinship? From our knowledge of
the past we form our judgment of the future, and see,
with Thoreau, that **it is part of the destiny of the
human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off
eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes left off
eating each other when they came in contact with the
more civilised, "t
* " Trooper Peter Halket."
t Walden, "Higher Laws."
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VEGETARIANISM AS RELATED TO OTHER
REFORMS
It is sometimes held by the champions of vegetarianism
that reform of diet is the starting-point and foundation-
stone of all other reform — a panacea for the ills and
maladies of the world. This over-estimate on the part
of a few enthusiasts of an unpopular cause is due,
presumably, to a revolt from the contrary extreme of
depreciation ; for a little thought must show us that, in
the complexity of modern life, there is no such thing as
a panacea for social ailments, and that, as there is no
royal road to knowledge, so there is no royal road
to reform. It is impossible for vegietaranism to solve
the social question, unless by alliance with various
other reforms that are advancing pari passu — so inter-
locked and interdependent are all these struggles
towards freedom. It has been well said that, " By
humanitarians, socialists, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists,
teetotalers, land-reformers, and all such seekers of human
welfare, this must be borne in mind — that each of their
particular efforts is but a detail of the whole work of
social regeneration, and that we cannot rightly understand
and direct our own little piece of effort unless we know
it, and pursue it, as part of the great whole."*
Still more mistaken, on the other hand, is that common
prejudice against food reform which would exclude it
altogether from the dignity of propagandism, and would
limit it to the personal practice of individuals. " There
can be no objection," says Dr. Burney Yeo, "to in-
dividuals adopting any kind of diet which they may find
answer their needs and minister to their comfort ; it is
only when they attempt to enforce what they practise
* The I^ew Charter, " The Humanitarian View."
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I02 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
on others that they must expect to encounter rational
opposition."* Unfortunately, we have learnt by bitter
experience that rational opposition is the last thing we
can expect to encounter — as, indeed, is made sufficiently
evident by Dr. Yeo's argument. For how could in-
dividual vegetarians have ever heard of the new diet
except for the propaganda ? And why have vegetarians,
as a body, less right than teetotalers, socialists, or any
other propagandists, not to " enforce," but to advocate
their philosophy of diet with the view of ultimately
influencing public opinion? This professional attempt
to class vegetarianism as an idiosyncrasy, and not a
system, is as irrational as it is insincere, and what its
insincerity is may be seen from the fact that, though we
are told at one moment that " there can be no objection "
to individual practice of the diet, yet whenever individuals
do attempt to practise it, they meet with the strongest
possible objection from the doctors themselves !
Thus it comes about that in this progressive age, and
even among those who label themselves " progressives,"
vegetarianism is so frequently regarded as a mere whim
and crotchet, with no practical bearing on the forward
movement of to-day. It is a marvel that so many
" advanced " journals, which have a good word for a
host of worthy causes that are fighting an uphill battle
against monopoly and injustice — social reform, land
reform, law reform, prison reform, hospital reform, and
a hundred more — are dumb as death, or speak only to
sneer, when the subject is food reform; and thus lead
their readers to suppose that, whereas on all other
matters there has been a great change of feeling during
the past half-century, on the one matter of diet there
has been no sort of progress I Yet they might easily
learn, if they made serious inquiry, that the reformed
dietetics, so far from being the outcome of mere senti-
ment about animals, have a past record based as surely
on moral and scientific reasoning as that of any cause
included in the progressive programme. Vegetarianism
* " Foods in Health and Disease."
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VEGETARIANISM AND OTHER REFORMS 103
is, in truth, progressiveness in diet; and for a progressive to
scout such ideas as valueless and Utopian is to play the
part (as far as diet is concerned) of a reactionist. What
is the meaning of this strange discrepancy ? It must
mean, we fear, that to a large number of our social
reformers the reform of other persons is much more
congenial battle-cry than the reform of one's self. Hinc
ilia lacrymce. They call vegetarianism "impracticable"
for the strange reason that, unlike most isms^ it asks
them to do something individually which they know
they could do — if they wished 1 It is impracticable
because it does not suit them to practise it.
Reformer : Let me entreat you ; give up this fanciful scheme
of vegetarianism and come and work for social reform.
Vegetarian : Social reform without food reform ! Is not
that rather a lame and lop-sided business ?
Reformer : Not at all. When we have so many things to
do we must do the most important ones first.
Vegetarian : And what are the most important ?
Reformer : Well, there is international peace and arbitration.
You will admit that our first duty is to avoid unnecessary blood-
shed.
Vegetarian : Ah, I see I And the habit of living by blood-
shed doesn't come within your scope !
Reformer ; Then there is the land question, and the need
of relieving the congestion of our crowded cities by the revival
of agriculture.
Vegetarian : So, of course, you can't attend to a diet-system
which would bring people back to the land !
Reformer ; There is also the temperance problem — the
terrible evils of the drink crave.
Vegetarian : Which would disappear for the most part if
we left off eating flesh.
Reformer: And the welfare of animals — for to that also I
devote myself. We need some stringent legislation for the
better prevention of cruelty.
Vegetarian : We do. But as such legislation would leave
your reformers dinnerless, don't you think you should revise
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I04 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
your dietary meantime? Your reforms are excellent, I grant
you ; but what of self-reform f Does not reform, like charity,
begin at home ?
Reformer : Well, well ; to everyone his taste — reform or
self-reform. I prefer the former ; you the latter, I suppose.
Vegetarian : No ; that is just where you are mistaken. I
prefer both at once.
Reform and self-reform, not reform or self-reform — that
is the true key to the solution of the social question.
The work that we can do ourselves is the most whole-
some condiment for the work that we can only do
through society. And here let me express the hope
that, as a matter of ppHcy, vegetarians will stand aloof
from all " philanthropic " schemes of vicarious food reform
in prisons, reformatories, and workhouses ; for there is
no surer way of making a principle unpopular than by
forcing it on the poor and helpless, while carefully
avoiding it one's self. Philanthropists, if they be philan-
thropists, will practise what they preach ; by their
practice we shall know them.
To the so-called ethical, no less than to the political,
school of thought the question of vegetarianism is un-
welcome, obtruding as it does on the polite wordiness of
learned discussion with an issue so coarsely downright :
" You are a member of an ethical society — do you live
by butchery?** But the ethics of diet are the very
last subject with which a cultured ethical society would
concern itself, and the attitude of the modern ** ethicist "
towards the rights of animals is still that of the medieval
schoolman. The ethicist does not wish to forego his
beef and mutton, so he frames his ethics to avoid the
danger of such mishap, and while he talks of high themes
with the serene wisdom of a philosopher the slaughter-
houses continue to run blood. We surmise that the
royal founder and archetype of ethical societies was that
learned but futile monarch referred to in the epitaph :
Here lies our mutton-loving king.
Whose word no man relies on :
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
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VEGETARIANISM AND OTHER REFORMS 105
So, to6, throughout the whole fiel4 of hygiene, temper-
ance, and plain living, to ignore vegetarianism is^ to
ignore one of the most potent influences for self-restraint.
One is reluctant to quote the late Sir Henry Thompson
in any matter that tends to the praise of vegetarianism,
in view of the extreme irritability which that distinguished
scientist exhibited as regards his sacred text, with which
you could never take the liberty of assuming that, when
it distinctly said one thing, it did not mean the opposite ;
yet he did say that " a proportion amounting at least to
more than one-half of the disease which embitters the
middle and latter part of life, among the middle and
upper classes of the population, is due to avoidable errors
in diet.*'* If this be so, it is obvious that diet reform (of
some sort) is very urgently needed; and I submit that
it would be difficult to frame any intelligible scheme of
diet reform in which vegetarian principles should play
no part, embracing, as they do, all the best features of
temperance and frugality. What is the use of for ever
preaching about the avoidance of luxuries and stimulants,
if you rule out of your system the one dietary which
makes stimulants and luxuries impossible ? The relation
of vegetarianism to temperance, of the food question to
the drink question, is that of the greater which includes
the less.
But it is when we turn from philanthropy to zoophily,
and to the questions more particularly affecting the wel-
fare of animals, that the importance of vegetarianism, in
spite of the stubborn attempts of the old-fashioned
" animal lovers " to overlook it, is most marked. Here,
again, I do not share the extreme vegetarian view that
food reform is the foundation of other reforms, for I think
it can be shown that all cruelties to animals, whether
inflicted in the interests of the dinner-table, the labora-
tory, the hunting-field, or any other institution, are the
outcome of one and the same error — the blindness which
can see no unity and kinship, but only difference and
division, between the human and the non-human race.
* Nineteenth Century , May, 1885.
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io6 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
This blindness it is — this crass denial of a common origin,
a common nature, a common structure, and common
pleasures and pains — that has alone hardened men in all
ages of the world, civilised or barbarous, to inflict such
fiendish outrages on their harmless fellow-beings ; and to
remove this blindness we need, it seems to me, a deeper
and more radical remedy than the reform of sport, or of
physiological methods, or even of diet alone. The only real
cure for the evil is the growing sense that the lower
animals are closely akin to us, and have rights.
And here we see the inevitable logic of vegetarianism,
if our belief in the rights of animals is ever to quit the
stage of theory and enter the stage of fact ; for just as
there can be no human rights where there is slavery, so
there can be no animal rights where there is eating of
flesh. *< To keep a man, slave or servant," says Edward
Carpenter, " for your own advantage merely, to keep an
animal that you may eat it, is a lie ; you cannot look
that man or animal in the face." I am not saying that
it is not a good thing that, quite apart from food reform,
anti-vivisectionists should be denouncing the doings of
" the scientific inquisition," while humanitarians of another
school are exposing the horrors of sport, for cruelty is
a many-headed monster, and there must at times be
a concentration of energy on a particular spot ; but I do
say that any reasoned principle of kindness to animals
which leaves vegetarianism outside its scope is, in the
very nature of things, foredoomed to failure.*
Vegetarianism is an essential part of any true zoophily,
and the reason why it is not more generally recognised
as such is the same as that which excludes it from the
plan of the progressive — that it is so upsetting to the
everyday habits of the average maa Few of us, com-
paratively, care to murder birds in "sport," and still
fewer to cut up living animals in the supposed interests
of "science," but we have all been taught to regard
♦ Take, for example, the rule to which some bird-lovers bind
themselves, to wear no feathers but those of birds killed for
food. One is reminded of Thomas Paine's epigram : " They
pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird."
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VEGETARIANISM AND OTHER REFORMS 107
flesh food as a necessity, and it is a matter, at first, of
some effort and self-denial to rid ourselves of complicity
in butchering. Herein is at once the strength and the
weakness of the case for vegetarianism — the strength as
regards its logic, and the weakness as regards its un-
popularity — that it makes more direct personal demand
on the earnestness of its believers than other forms of
zoophily do; for which reason there is a widespread,
though perhaps unconscious, tendency among zoophilists
to evade it.
Yet that such evasion is a blunder may be seen from
the outcry raised against it not by vegetarians only, but
by the vivisectionists and sportsmen themselves, who are
quick to ask the zoophilists why, if they are so eager for
the well-being of the animals, they do not desist from
eating them — a question which, however insincere in the
mouths of some who propound it, must at least be
allowed to be logical. For it is simple truth that though
vivisection is a more refined and diabolical torture, and
sport a more stupidly wanton one, the sum of suffering
that results from the practice of flesh-eating is greater
and more disastrous than either, and by being so familiarly
paraded in our streets is a cause of wider demoralisation.
When one thinks of the aimless and stunted life, as well
as the barbarous death, of the wretched victims of the
slaughter-house, bred as they are for no better purpose
than to be unnaturally fattened for the table, it makes
one marvel that so many kindly folk, keenly sensitive to
the cruelties inflicted elsewhere, should be utterly deaf
and blind to the doings of their family butcher. The
zoophilist loves to quote the famous lines of Coleridge :
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
But what kind of " love " is that which eats the object of
its affection? There are hidden rocks in that poetical
passage which a sense of humour should indicate to the
pilot of zoophily.
Our position, therefore, is this — that while we make
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io8 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
no exaggerated claim for vegetarianism, as in itself a
panacea for human ills and animal sufferings, we insist
on the rational view that reform of diet is an indispen-
sable branch of social organisation, and that it is idle to
talk of recognising " rights of animals '* so long as we
unconcernedly eat them. Vegetarianism is no more and
no less than an essential part in the highly complex
engine which is to shape the fabric of a new social
structure, an engine which will not work if a single screw
be missing. The part without the whole is undeniably
powerless; but so also, as it happens, is the whole without
the part.
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CONCLUSION^
The chief object of this work, as stated at the outset,
has been to prove the logical soundness of vegetarian
principles, and the hoUowness of the hackneyed taunt,
so often a makeshift for reasoning, that vegetarians are
a crew of mild brainless enthusiasts whose "hearts
are better than their heads." How far I have been suc-
cessful in this purpose it is for the reader to judge; I
trust it has, at least, been made plain that, if it is logic
that our friends are in need of, we are quite ready to
accommodate them, and that nothing will please us
better than a thorough intellectual siftmg of the whole
problem of diet. Only it must be a thorough sifting.
The great foe of vegetarianism, as of everjr other reform,
is habit — ^that inert, blind, dogged force which time called
into being, and time only can outwear — and it is this
which lurks behind the flimsy sophisms and excuses that
the flesh-eater loves to set up, in which, as a rule, though
there is much show of controversy, there is little real
discussion. To those of our opponents who honestly
wish to grapple with the question of diet, and to under-
stand what vegetarianism means (whether they agree
with it or not), I submit that the following points have,
at any rate, l)een clearly set before them :
I. That the objections raised to the name" vegetarian'*
are founded on sheer ignorance of the word's origin, and
calculated, if not designed, to distract attention from the
substance by fixing it on the shadow. It is not nowa-
days seriously denied, by any responsible authority, that
a vegetable diet, with the addition of eggs and milky is quite
adequate for nutriment ; but the method is this — to allow
what is said (rightly or wrongly) of the sufiiciency o£
a strictly vegetable diet to be misunderstood by the
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no THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
public as referring to "vegetarianism." Thus, Dr. J.
Burney Yeo, in his " Food in Health and Disease,"
first argues that "vegetarians" have no right to their
title, because they consume animal products, and then
proceeds to allege various reasons against "a purely
vegetable diet," which by his own showing is not what
vegetarianism represents. This is a fair sample of flesh-
eaters* logic.
2. That the immediate aim of vegetarians is not that
which, under various forms, is so industriously foisted
on them — viz., a desire to attain at one step to the
millennium, by altogether ceasing to take the life of
animals, or by entire abstinence from animal products —
but rather it is a practical, intelligible, though necessarily
imperfect, attempt to humanise, as far as may be, the
present sanguinary diet system, by the omission at least
of its more loathsome and barbarous features.
3. That vegetarianism, if once admitted to be practic-
able, offers certain positive benefits of the utmost value,
humane, aesthetic, hygienic, social, economic; while, on
the other hand, the denials that have hitherto been made
of its practicability, on the plea of structure, laws of
nature, climate, digestion, and so forth, are far too weak
and illogical to bear the test of criticism. There may, of
course, be some conclusive reason against vegetarianism,
but if so, why is its production delayed ?
4. That in the greater number of the arguments
brought against vegetarianism, the importance of the
moral aspect of the question is studiously kept out of
sight. Thus, Sir Henry Thompson, in his Nineteenth
Century article of 1885, while admitting the possibility of
abstaining from flesh foods, gave judgment on the whole
in favour of a moderate use of them — but without
allowing the smallest weight to humane or moral con-
siderations. Writing on the same subject in 1898, he
so far repaired this oversight as to argue that it is really
kinder to eat animals than not to do so, because other-
wise they would not be bred at all ! That is the amount
of attention the moral side of vegetarianism receives
from its opponents, a great humane issue being set
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CONCLUSION 111
aside by a sophism more suited for a Savoy comedy than
for serious discussion.
But there is the further question — and as far as these
chapters are concerned, the final question — ^why, if
vegetarianism is part and parcel of a genuine " pro-
gressive " movement, does it not more rapidly progress ?
"Why so little result from your propaganda?" is the
frequent sneer of the flesh-eater, and the vegetarian
himself is sometimes fain to be down-hearted at the
seeming slowness of his advance. Does vegetarianism
progress? Yes and no, according to the expectations,
reasonable or unreasonable, that its supporters have
been cherishing. If we have fondly hoped to witness, in
the future, the triumph of the humaner living, it must be
allowed that the actual rate of progress is extremely dis-
heartening ; but if, on the contrary, we work under a
rational understanding that a widespread change of diet,
like any other radical change, is a matter not of years
but of centuries, then we shall not find in the slow
growth of our movement any reason for dissatisfaction.
Revolution in personal habits, be it remembered, is even
more difi&cult than revolution in political forms, and
needs a greater time for its fulfilment, and, looked at in
this light, vegetarianism has made as much progress
during the past half-century as any other cause which
aims at so far-reaching a change.
But what of the many individual failures, it is asked,
among those who make trial of vegetarianism ? Taking
the circumstances into account, the failures cannot be
regarded as numerous ; for in every such movement there
are half-hearted people who are impelled by motives of
restlessness and curiosity, rather than of real conviction,
and in view of the personal obstacles that beset the path
of the vegetarian it is not surprising that in food reform,
as in drink reform, there are a certain number of back-
sliders. In an ordinary household every possible influence,
social and domestic, is brought to bear on the heretic
who abstains from flesh foods. Anxious relatives and
indignant friends adjure him to remember the duty he
owes to himself and to his family, and urge him for the
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112 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
sake of those dear to him, if not for his own, to return
to that great sacramental bond of union between man
and man — ^the eating of our non-human fellow-beings.
Is he smitten by one of the numberless ailments that are
the stock-in-trade of the physician, and of which flesh-
eaters are daily the victims in every part of the world ?
The doctor looks wise, shakes his head, and informs a
sorrowing circle that it is the direct result of " his
vegetarianism." Above all, the fear of ridicule, acting
on the natural unwillingness of mankind to venture along
unknown paths, is a strong deterrent ; for there are still
many persons to whom the idea of abstinence from
butchers' meat is positively a matter for merriment,
and it seems fated that vegetarianism, like every new
principle, must be a target for such shafts. Well, so be
it! We know that the struggle will be a long one,
and if vegetarianism has got to run the blockade of
Noodledom, and a huge amount of foolish talk must
perforce be fired off, the sooner the battle commences,
and the sooner it is concluded, the better for all con-
cerned. And ridicule, as the flesh-eater will learn, is a
weapon which can be wielded by more parties than
one.
For, to be frank, the dietists of the old-fashioned
kreophagist school have talked, and sure talking, a great
deal of downright nonsense in their tirades against vege-
tarianism, and the only reason why they have not been
more widely brought to book is that they speak in ortho-
dox quarters where no reply is permitted. The oracle,
of course, must not be answered or criticised. So far
as they have condescended to state a case against food
reform, it is a case which would be laughed out of court,
as a string of quibbles and absurdities, in any open
discussion; for the specialist, that most humourless of
persons, is apt to forget that the moment he quits the
ground on which he has made himself a master (and such
^ p^roimd has very narrow limitations) he is no longer
infallible, and that if he thinks to exorcise modern feeling
by the repetition of ancient formulas, he will only make
himself ridiculous. And as a matter of pure humour,
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CONCLUSION 113
apart from humanity, which is the more comical — ^the
man who can live in simple affluence on a supply of food
which is as little costly to himself as it is burdensome to
others, or he who cannot be content unless he gluts an
ogreish appetite on animals slaughtered for his larder,
and then pharisaically pretends that he has done them
a kindness by eating them ? It is custom, and custom
alone — the thraldom of that " ceaseless round of mutton
and beef to which the dead level of civilisation reduces
Us "* — that prevents civilised men from seeing the essential
silliness of maintaining the diet of savages.
That a percentage of those who make trial of vege-
tarianism should return to their former habit is in
accordance with what always happens in the fight
between the new and the old, and at the utmost — that is,
in the rare cases where such trial has been a genuine one
— proves only that a change of diet is much more difficult
for some persons than it is for others, a fact which all
rational food reformers have recognised. But from the
force of affirmative testimony there is no escape, when, as
in the case of v^etarianism successfully practised, and
yielding the best results, the instances are drawn from
every rank and temperament, and are amply sufficient in
number to prove the experience trustworthy. It is idle
to go on asserting that a thing cannot be done, when you
are face to face with some thousands of people who not
only have done it, but are happier and healthier in
consequence.
•With the question of the right choice of food, and how
to adopt vegetarianism, I am not here concerned ; such
information is readily accessible in current vegetarian
literature. But it must be said in conclusion — and this
is the thought which, above all others, I would leave in
the mind of the reader — that the surest warrant of success
in the reform of diet is a sincere belief in the moral
rightness of the cause. The Mrit in which one takes up
vegetarianism is the main factor in the result. It is
useless to look for any absolute proof in such matters —
* Richard Jefferies, " Field and Hedgerows."
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114 THE LOGIC OF VEGETARIANISM
the proof is in one's self — for those, at least, who have
heart to feel, and brain to ponder, the cruelty and folly
of flesh-eating. It is an issue where logic is as wholly
on the one side as habit is wholly on the other, and where
habit is as certainly the shield of barbarism as logic is
the sword of humaneness.
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INDEX
Adams, a K., quoted, 68, 69
.Esthete, the, 5z-54
AUurmist, the, 84-80
**AU or Nothing' argument, 10-12.
See Consistenqr
Animals, what would become of them?
86.87
Animal products, use of, 5, 6, 42, 43,
Z09, zio
AnthropcMd apes, z8-33
Anthropologist, the, 34-98
Anthropophogist, the, 95-98
Asceticism, zz, 72
Athletics, vegetarian, 60
Axon, W. E. A., quoted, 81
Bible and Beef, 89
Bon Vivant, the, 30-32
Brahminism, 43, 44, 87
British Islander, the, 67, 68
British Medical Journal, quoted, 29,
34» 62, 63
Buchanan, Robert, quoted, 96
Bntcheiy, effect on character, 47-50
Canine teeth, argument from, Z9
Cannibalism, zo, 64, 65, 73 (note) ; its
^ rdation to flesh-eating, 95-97
^CamaUst, the, 73
Carpenter, Edward, quoted, 7Z (note),
Z06
Cartesian theory, 26
Cams, Dr. Pkm, quoted, 86
Catde transit, 3Z
Chemical aigument, 9, zo
Chemist, the, 64-66
Cheyne, Dr., quoted, 60
Chicago shambles, 35. 36, 49, 55
Climate, argument from, 67-70
" Cock and Bull " argument, 42, 43
Coit, Dr. Stanton, quoted, 39
Consistency, true and fialse. See '
or Nothuig," 4Z-46
Cramming system, 75, 76
'AU
Darwinian theory, 25, 26
Dembo, Dr., quoted, 32
De Qumcey. quoted, 55
Digestibility of foods, 62-65
Diseased flesh, 58, 59
Drover, the, 3Z
Economy of vegetarian diet, 77, 78
Esquimaux, what would become of
them? 68
" Ethics of Diet," Z5 (note), 93
Ethical Societies, attitude towards
Vegetarianism, 39, Z04
Fish-eating, 45, 46, 82 (note)
Flinders retrie, Professor, quoted,
97
Franldin, Benjamin, 24, 28
Eraser, J. F., quoted, 55
Frugivorous nature of Man, z8-3t
Gordon-Cumming, C. F., quoted, 65
Grace before meat, 92, 93
Greg, W. R., quoted, 79, 80
Habit, influence of, Z09, zz3
Haig, Dr. A., 60, 6z
Herbivora, the, 20, 62
Hofmann's Eroeriments, 64, 65
Hudson, W. H., quoted, 36
Humanity, synonymous with culture,
SI. 54
Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 54, 93
Hygienic Aspect of Vegetarianism,
Keith, Dr. G., quoted, 75
Kingsford, Dr. Anna, Z3 (note),
quoted, 74
Kropotldn, Prince, quoted, 25, 26,
8z (note)
Land question, the, 80
Lawrence, Sir William, quoted, 68
"5
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xi6
INDEX
Leather, what should we do without?
84-86
Lester, H. F., quoted, 48, 50
Life, relative value of, 10, 27, 28, 4a,
Logic, uses of, x, 109
" Man is what he eats," ^^
Manure question, 85
Majcwell, SirH., 38
Mayor, Rev. Professor J. E. B., 5, 2Z
Meat Trades Journal^ quoted, 32, 89
" Metaphysic of the larder," 37-39
Michelet, Jules, quoted, 33, 34
Monastic orders, vegetarian diet of,
14*74
Moral aspect of diet question, 10, 34,
72-74, no
Nature, argument from, 24-28
Newman, Professor F. W., quoted,
58.80
Nordau, Max, quoted, 8z
Oldfield. Dr. J., quoted, 21 (note),
rx^5».7o.
Omnivonsm, 2o< 21, 99
Owen, Sir Richard, quoted, 18
P^y, Dr. Wniiam, quoted, 89
Patriot, the, 15, 16
Philanthropist, the, 84, 108
Plutarch, 14, 93
Progressive movement, relation of
Vegetarianism towards, X02, Z03
Psychic philosopher, the, 72, 73
"Pythagorean diet," the same as
Vegetarianism, 4, 6
Reform and self-reform, 104
Reformer, the, Z03, 104
Richardson, Sir B. w., quoted, 19,
47.57.59.65.66,75,77,78
Rights of animals, no
Ritchie, Professor D. G., 51
Roman soldiery, diet of, 15
Russell, Hon. R., quoted, 13 (note),
78 (note)
Schrdner, Olive, quoted, 99
Scientist, the, 19-23
Shaw, G. Bernard, quoted, 54
Slaughter-house, the, 32 ; reform of,
39.40
Slaughterman's work, effect on
character, 47-50
Slavery, justified by Bible texts, 90, 91
Smith, Dr. T. P., quoted, 33, 43
Sophist, the, 37, 38
Sport, in relation to flesh-eating, 95,
96
Stead. W. T., 35, 36. 43, 44
Stephen, Leslie, 38
Superior Person, the, 9-1 z
Temperance Movement, 69
Tertulliao, Contra Psychieos, 73 (note)
Textualist, the, 9Z
Thompson, Sh* Henry, 5-7, 45, 96,
99, Z05, zio
Thomson, J. Arthur, quoted, 26
Thoreau, quoted, 7Z, 72, 79, zoo
Tuberculosis, danger of, 58
Turkish soldiery, diet of, z6
" V^etarian," the name, ori^^n, 4 ;
objections urged against it, 4-8,
Z09, zzo ; why retained, 7, 8
Vegetarianism, misunderstandings of,
z, 2 ; grades of, 6, zz ; its real pur-
pose, 9-Z2, zzo ; a moral principle,
9, zo. 29. 47, 73, 74, zzo; relation
to other reforms, zoz-108; indivi-
dual failures and successes, zzz,
ZZ2, zz6 ; "inconvenience" of, 78
Vegetarian Society, its founding and
principles, 4, 5, 45
Verbalist, the, 4, 5
Wages question, in relation to Vege-
tarianism, 79
Wallace, Dr. Alfred R., quoted, 36
Wilson, Dr. Andrew, 44, 45, 64, 65,
zoo
Wollaston's "Religion of Nature,"
29. 30
Women's work at Deptford, 48
Woolman, John, quoted, 90, 9Z
Yeo, Dr. J. Bumey, quoted, 77, xoz,
Z02, zzo
Zoophily, as related to Vegetarianism,
Z05-Z07
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